# Is there a limit to any foot race? (e.g. 100m)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-limit-to-any-foot-race-e-g-100m/752234>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 15, 2016, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-limit-to-any-foot-race-e-g-100m/752234 "2016-04-15T01:10:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2016, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-limit-to-any-foot-race-e-g-100m/752234/21 "2016-04-21T12:14:02Z")

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> [@RadicalPi](#):
>
> I read an article somewhere that said that, based on a statistical analysis of world record times in various footraces,\* there was quite a bit of room for improvement in the record time for the 100 meters. I’m not sure how much, but I think it might have been along the lines of a second, or about 10%. Longer races, like the mile and the marathon, were much closer, proportionally speaking, to their limits.
> 
> - including how long each record stands and by how much it is broken each time it is broken, and things like that

A couple of years ago, Runner’s World published a fascinating article on what it’ll take to produce a sub-2 hour marathon. The pace of new records being set in the marathon has accelerated (no pun intended) in recent years.

[http://rw.runnersworld.com/sub-2/](http://rw.runnersworld.com/sub-2/)

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**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2016, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-limit-to-any-foot-race-e-g-100m/752234/22 "2016-04-21T17:13:06Z")

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If you took thousands of newborn children and raised them in Sprint Factories, to do nothing but run fast, and then culled out all but the very best, you could produce runners who could achieve very high speeds. But there is a strong social resistance to the idea of spending all those human lives in order to create such a monster. Americans got all bent out of shape during the cold war, when the Russians started selecting school girls to be olympic class athletes, to gobble up all those undeserved gold medals by inhumanely impeding social development.

So thee is a deep divide between the speed that can potentially be attained physiologically by a human organism, and one that can attained by a normal member of the human social fabric within current ethical paradigms…

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**Author:** ![ssgenius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@ssgenius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ssgenius)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-limit-to-any-foot-race-e-g-100m/752234/23 "2016-04-23T00:01:27Z")

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> **[SpeedEndurance.com](https://speedendurance.com/)**
>
> Learning how to run faster is more than speed training and speed endurance. Rest and recovery, nutrition and supplements, and the mental game are equally important to prevent injuries and make you faster.

Has some articles and speculation on this

He suspects that a sub 9.5 in the 100 m is possible but not much more

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