Original title: World-record envelopes: The speed-distance trade-off in racing events
John Ýinger · October 2026
Athletes run slower when races get longer. If you plot the world-record speeds for all race distances, you get an outer boundary line called an envelope. But that line does not represent one superhuman runner. Instead, it is made of many different specialists who each peak at their own distance. This paper separates individual runner limits from the overall record line using elite personal best times, showing men's running records sped up over 120 years without altering their curve.
A school track coach tries to buy running shoes for the entire team. A single runner might squeeze into one shoe size for sprints, but they cannot wear that same tight shoe comfortably for a marathon. In this paper, world records look like a single smooth path across every distance, but they are actually formed by stitching together the best moments of totally different athletes who are each built for a specific event.
Scientists often use world records to figure out the limits of human biology across different race lengths. But world records combine two completely different things: how a single runner slows down over longer distances, and the fact that different runners are built for different races. Mixing these up leads to flawed conclusions about human endurance.
The abstract does not give results for specific distances or sports beyond running, freestyle swimming, and speed skating. It also does not quantify how much existing studies misinterpret human physiology.
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World-record envelopes: The speed-distance trade-off in racing events — John Ýinger — PLoS ONE — doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0359859
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.