"Feet, do your stuff!" is the famous self-command of running. But there is more to running than that, as data from the laboratory are beginning to show.
David Costill, PhD, is professor and director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University, Muncie, Ind. He also runs in marathons. In this little book, Costill sums up many of the findings that he and other investigators have produced so far about the physiology and psychology of running.
There seems to be something here for everyone—the runner, the coach, the physician, even the armchair athlete whose interest is purely academic. Some factors, the available data suggest, may be unchangeable, such as leg muscle-fiber composition. (Persons with a high percentage of rapidly contracting fibers seem to do better in sprinting events, at least at the top levels of competition, while those with preponderantly slower contracting fibers may be well advised to enter