Watching Their Steps

During a brief stop, we sat panting, dripping sweat while blood samples and blood pressures were taken. Then we got back up and went off at 11 mph, the treadmill increasing in slope 2�% every two minutes. The pace was not difficult, but when the incline steepened, it rapidly became work. After six minutes, when the old feeling of barely controlled panic came on and one had to keep a vigilant will, it was hard, far harder than running on a track, because there was no observable progress, nothing moving past, nothing ahead to shoot for, just a black indifferent wastebasket. I went 7� minutes, and as soon as I was off I knew that I hadn't approached my best. Afterward, most runners were unusually quiet, washed out, without any of the glow that comes after a race well run, or even after a time trial. Shorter hated the test and stepped off after seven minutes, saying later, "You know how Pollock teaches you hand signals [to keep people from shaking their heads and ripping the tubes out of the machine]—well, at the end there I was ready to give him a hand signal everybody knows."

Prefontaine, as ever, was the exception. On the treadmill he was transformed. He drew his arms up high, hooking with his elbows as he ran, visibly fighting the machine, raging against it for the final minute. He ran not with the kind of unseeing inward acceptance of pain that the rest of us showed, but beetle-browed, furious. He complained at the prick of the needle as he sat heaving afterward, but quickly rose in an astonishing good humor. "I feel stimulated, invigorated from that," he said. "I feel ready to run, more than I have in weeks." A week later he would run a 3:58.6 indoor mile at College Park, Md., but now it turned out that he had done something far more important for the scientists.

" Prefontaine's oxygen uptake of 84.4 ml-kg x min. is one of the highest ever recorded in a runner," said Pollock. "This is the volume of oxygen that a body is able to consume during maximum stress. It reflects on the ability of oxygen transport systems, the lungs and heart and blood vessels." The average for the world-class runners was 76.9 ml-kg x min. (Average for normal runners: 46.5.) At the low end of the spectrum was Shorter with a score of 71.2 ml-kg x min., a striking finding since his three-mile and six-mile times were nearly identical to Prefontaine's (12:52 and 12:51.4, respectively, in the three-mile).

This discrepancy Pollock attempted to explain by noting that the runners seemed to fall into two groups, which he termed middle distance and long distance. The middle-distance runners were those whose best races were at six miles or less; the long-distance men were marathoners. The prime example of the first group, Prefontaine, held most American records through 10,000 meters but hated to run, even slowly, for more than 20 miles. The archetypal long-distance runner was Shorter. Comparing the two groups' scores, Pollock found a clear difference. "The long-distance runners use three to four milliliters of oxygen less than middle-distance men at all speeds. In terms of oxygen consumed, they are significantly more efficient." Why? What allowed Shorter to keep up with Prefontaine, even though he used 16% less oxygen at the various speeds tested? Here, finally, it seemed research was entering an area that promised to improve performance. Discover what Shortens compensatory quality was, and there was a chance it would be learnable.

"Unfortunately, we haven't the slightest idea how to account for it," said Pollock, but he reasoned that efficiency had to be gained in one of two ways. "The long-distance runners either get more work out of what oxygen they do take in or they run in a manner that doesn't require as much energy. The one would be chemical, inside the muscle cells. The other would be biomechanical, a question of coordination."

The biomechanical inquiry was up to Peter Cavanagh of Penn State, an energetic young Briton who bears a likeness to pictures of Edgar Allan Poe. "Essentially, we're studying the elements of style," he said to us. "We need measurements of your running movements and of the forces that cause them. Runners use energy to fight wind and gravity and for accelerating and decelerating their limb segments. What we'll do is ascertain from your measurements the weights and centers of gravity of your running equipment, then photograph you running on a treadmill at different speeds while you wear a biaxial accelerometer. We're interested in how much energy you're wasting."

Cavanagh's test was the most spectacular of the performances expected of us, first because eventually we were to reach a 4:15-mile pace, and also because the two synchronized cameras shooting 100 frames per second required banks of blazing lights, and finally because we ran without our shorts. Moreover, to facilitate analysis of the pictures, black spots were painted on each runner's shoulder, elbow, hip, knee, ankle, foot and cheek as well as on the chest, abdomen, forehead and chin. As soon as testing was begun in the Aerobics Center lounge, signs appeared on all the doors: FILMING, NO ENTRANCE. "Apparently Dr. Cooper didn't want to offend the delicate sensitivities of Texas ladies with the sight of subjects in their jocks," said Cavanagh. Signs or not, each time someone was on the machine a hushed crowd gathered. "It felt like a scene from a Fellini movie," said Don Kardong. "The running near-naked with all the people staring, the strange black spots...."

The runners' unfamiliarity with the test was one of Cavanagh's main concerns and, in fact, Geis was clearly uneasy on the treadmill, while Phillip Ndoo of Kenya and Eastern New Mexico (on whom white spots had to be painted) actually fell off.

After months of analysis Cavanagh isolated several areas of mechanical interest. One had to do with trunk acceleration. "Each runner has his own pattern, of course, but some are very consistent and symmetrical, stride after stride," he reported. "Others are consistent but asymmetric, and a third group is inconsistent, never quite finding equilibrium. This is the most promising area for giving feedback to runners. Eventually we'll be able to show a man his patterns on the spot as he runs, and he'll be able to work for consistency."

A second key finding was foot placement. "Viewed from the front, we watched where the runner planted his foot in relation to the midline," Cavanagh's report read. "Some crossed over. Prefontaine, especially, crossed his right foot to the left side. We found that amazing." Prefontaine's competitors always found it less so. As a track man runs half his races on a left-turning curve, crossing the right or outside foot may be an advantage. Prefontaine ran curves more smoothly and closer to the curb than any of us.