THE SPRINTER’S LIMIT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20191, 31 August 1927, Page 6

THE SPRINTER’S LIMIT.

Professor) A. V. Hill, a winner of the Nobel medical prize, in an.interview in the Popular Science Monthly (New York) gives reasons for believing that the speed limit of the track sprinter has been nearly reached. A runner, ho says, travelling at high speed, must pay la tremondius price in energy for even a slight increase in speed. In running 100 yards in 10 seconds, a man uses nine-horsc-power of energy. This tremendous expenditure of energy supplies scientific basis for the belief, expressed by many prominent track coaches, that,, when the present sprint records are beaten, it -will be by fractions of a second so small that they can be recorded only by electric timing apparatus. Muscles contract and relax rapidly when a runner is travelling at high speed. Lactic acid—a, product of muscular fatigue—is manufactured at the rate of three or four grammes a second, and one and ono-hajf ounces of this comparatively strong acid in the muscles at the end of a fast 100 yards will result in a considerable falling-off in speed. Four ounces is enough to stop the athlete completely. Professor Hill has perfected an ingenious timing method, and his experiments show that it takes, at the start, about, one-tenth of a second for the runner to flash the order “Go!” from the brain to the muscled.