"Running" a marathon, which is more tiring?

[Mr Shine]

The other day, my dad and I were watching the TV and they showed clips from a marathon. When they showed the disabled contestants in the wheelchairs my dad said that he thought that must be exhausting. Obviously going 26 miles by either method is no picnic but I would imagine over the same distance using a wheelchair would be less tiring on average, due to the built in efficiencies of the model. But I dunno, and I wonder if there is concrete data?

[Telemark]

Wheelchair Records are roughly 1:15, running record is around 2:05. I would imagine that the ability to cut roughly 40% of the time means that the wheelchair athletes aren't working as hard simply because they're not working as long.

[runner pat]

The easy rolling of bicycle type wheels and coasting on downhills take much of the work off the athletes. Uphills are a bear as there are no lower gears to shift to, much like singespeed/fixed gear bikes.

[redshift]

The easy rolling of bicycle type wheels and coasting on downhills take much of the work off the athletes. Uphills are a bear as there are no lower gears to shift to, much like singespeed/fixed gear bikes.

At least with a SS/FG bike you still have A gear... with wheelchairs it would seem much much harder.

Wouldn't arm strength be lower than leg strength anyway?

[runner pat]

At least with a SS/FG bike you still have A gear... with wheelchairs it would seem much much harder.

Wouldn't arm strength be lower than leg strength anyway?

Arm strength is less, that's why they can't match a singlespeed bike over the same terrain.

Wheelchair racers aren't pushing the wheels, there's a pushrim mounted to the wheel, different diameters are used to alter the "gearing"

[Xema]

Wouldn't arm strength be lower than leg strength anyway?
If you take a look at the arms of elite wheelchair athletes, you'd probably say "Not a whole lot lower."