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The record is 44.72 km/h (27.78 mph), measured between meter 60 and meter 80 of the 100 meters sprint at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics by speed. [4] [5] (Bolt's average speed over the course of this race was 37.578 km/h or 23.35 mph.) [6] Compared to quadrupedal animals, humans are exceptionally capable of endurance, but incapable of great speed. [7]
The endurance running hypothesis is a series of conjectures which presume humans evolved anatomical and physiological adaptations to run long distances [1] [2] [3] and, more strongly, that "running is the only known behavior that would account for the different body plans in Homo as opposed to apes or australopithecines".
Each group ran a 60-meter run at 5.81 m/s (to represent distance running) and at maximal running speed. The study showed that non-sprinters ran with an inefficient gait for the maximal speed trial while all groups ran with energetically efficient gaits for the distance trial.
Crawling or quadrupedal movement is a method of human locomotion that makes use of all four limbs. It is one of the earliest gaits learned by human infants, [1] and has similar features to four-limbed movement in other primates and in non-primate quadrupeds. [2]
All of these factors make track and "football 40" performances essentially impossible to compare. The world best time for a "football 40" is 4.17 by Deion Sanders , while the extrapolated best for an Olympic-level athlete (including reacting to a starting gun) is 4.24 by Maurice Greene at the 2001 World Championships in Athletics .
Humans spontaneously switch from a walk to a run as speed increases. In humans, the preferred transition speed from walking to running typically occurs around 2.0 m/s (7.2 km/h; 4.5 mph), although slight differences have been shown based on testing methodology. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Some terrestrial animals are built for achieving extremely high speeds, such as the cheetah, pronghorn, race horse and greyhound, while humans can train to achieve high sprint speeds. There is no single determinant of maximum running speed: however, certain factors stand out against others and have been investigated in both animals and humans.
In terms of judging a person's speed, the best method of timing is through lasers which start and stop the times when passed through. A laser start (from a stationary position) is more accurate for measuring pure speed as it does not register a runner's reaction time, however, this method of timing a 40-yard dash can affect the accuracy by as much as 0.5 seconds with the manual stopwatch method.