Do shorter runners have an advantage since they are at lower altitude?

General relativity implies that time moves slower for your feet than your head or torso, so from the runner’s perspective, a taller torso is a disadvantage, which is why the common FAT perspective is used to time all runners, so no worries.

Lower altitude = thicker air = higher air resistance

Sleep high, live low.

I think it seems that way. Short light people do well at mountain races. Matt Carpenter is a little man after all and he was a beast. I’d rather be tall and sexy though. Running isn’t everything.

I don't know if carpenter is great example as many of his records besides maybe pikes ascent have all been broken by tall guys i.e. Remi from Swiss and Gray from USA. Technically higher cente of gravity would equate to taller athletes having a more difficult time on mountains. So these guys are cruising!

That’s some very astute thinking.

makes perfect sense with all the WRs set running on hands and knees

the main advantage a shorter runner has is -- smaller hands (lighter) and smaller penis (lighter) allowing them to run faster.

Yes but they are at a disadvantage when shelves are too high at a store.

Kipchoge is like 5'4" in heels and he weighs like 115 pounds when his pockets are empty. Marathon GOAT.

Cheptegei is 5'6 130. 5k and 10k WR holder

El Geurrouj is 5'9 128. 1500 WR holder

All the shorter WR are 6' or higher and Bolt is 6'5.

If you're a sprinter you're better off taller though if you were 5'3 your weiner would look more impressive.

But they don't get the training benefit of being at higher altitude, so it all evens out.

legs hitting the ground are a type 3 lever. And legs moving back and forth at the hip are again a type 3 lever.

A type 3 lever is when you are on the end of the lever arm, and the thing you are moving is on the other end. You can move the other end faster than usual, but the tradeoff is more force required.

That's why tall people like Bolt can run 9.59, but almost nobody over 6 feet tall can run a marathon under 2:04.

We 6 footers don't need to run a marathon that fast, of course. We are dominant wherever we are. Only short people need to go far away as fast as they can.

Actual little known fact.

Tall people die sooner (statistically).

And the difference is not small.

I think chicks dig tall guys because they DIE sooner and they get the inheritance faster.

Also almost no one who lives to be 100 is taller than 5'5"

If the weight and height numbers were independent - short middle thin distance runners outlive taller normies by up to 15 years.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Impact of height and weight on life span - PubMed

The study was conducted to evaluate one aspect of the entropy theory of aging, which hypothesizes that aging is the result of increasing disorder within the body, and which predicts that increasing mass lowers life span. The...

Open link

That’s silly, everybody knows that gravity increases the closer
you get to the ground. That’s the REAL reason stack height on shoes is limited
to 40mm 😉 So I guess anti-gravity shoes are the next
big thing….

Someone (or AI, I expect) may eventually be able to develop an elegant solution covering general relativity/time, air resistance, relative altitude/oxygen, gravity, and then minor issues like heat dissipation relative to body surface area, etc.

I look forward to this Grand Unified Theory — or Mini Unified Theory, if it favors the smaller runners.

Huh. I thought the old guys are short because they shrink with age. Turns out they were short all along, it’s just that tall guys don’t survive into their late 80s and 90s

Shorter runners have no advantage whatsoever at any distance unless they are short and thin

Shorter, stockier runners are better off concentrating on the middle distances or middle road distances up to half marathon.

Some shorter runners are also thin, it may be different for them but most short people have shorter, stubbier legs too.

I fall in to that category .

Don’t fall into that “ I have to train for marathons “trap.

Find your distance and concentrate on that. It won’t be anything longer than half marathon for most short runners.

A taller runner still has most of their bodies at short person altitude. However where oxygen intake occurs (the mouth or nose) is at a higher altitude.

Yes, but you are also training at altitude so it’s a wash.

One other great reason I come to LRC for posts like this right here. Much like the helium balloon post. Great stuff.