
One Kenyan Tribe Produces the World's Best Runners - monort
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/how-one-kenyan-tribe-produces-the-worlds-best-runners
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dalke
For a longer audio piece about this topic, which uses the same primary sources
(Epstein and Manners) as this 2013 NPR piece, see the RadioLab show "Cut and
Run" at
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/runners/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/runners/)
.

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omellet
This piece is an excerpt from the longer Radiolab episode.

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dalke
Thanks.

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rlpb
"Manners says that this enormous social pressure placed on your ability to
endure pain is actually great training for a sport like running where "pushing
through pain" is so fundamental to success."

Given that this is tradition, and failures are labelled cowards, I wonder if
this is actually evolution in action (rather than nurture)? Presumably the
"cowards" are likely to have less reproductive success?

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kriro
The comment on ankle weights was interesting. I'd like to see some event where
ankle weight is measured and all runners get added weight to bring them up to
the heavies ankle weight. I don't think this is how races should be run but it
would be interesting to see the results if you adjust for this. Might even be
possible to calculate some ankle-weight coefficient and apply it to race times
to get an interesting data point.

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yongelee
Ankle weights cause injuries so any kind of regulated sport using it would be
bad

