behone avab wrote:
It means people with less surface area genetically do better with body heat management and 110 pound runners will almost always have less surface area than runners weighing 135 pounds so that during a marathon contested with ambient air temperature at or above 70 degrees the smaller runner will not be affected by the assumed adverse conditions as much as the larger runner. Or something like that.
You kind of made a mess of the physiology here. Smaller runners may have an advantage in hot weather because they have MORE surface area in relationship to their mess, which means more efficient cooling. Surface area (skin) tends to iincrease at 2/3rds the rate of mass.