# Running barefoot? 18 hours a day? And Native Americans outrunning horses? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 11, 2004, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-barefoot-18-hours-a-day-and-native-americans-outrunning-horses/244560 "2004-05-11T02:44:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![The\_Llama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@The\_Llama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Llama)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-barefoot-18-hours-a-day-and-native-americans-outrunning-horses/244560/61 "2004-05-14T03:38:15Z")
OK, I have to weigh in here. First off, this is soooo freaking subjective. To argue whether or not a human can outrun a horse, without any qualifiers, is fucking stupid. It’s like me saying that I’m faster than Steve Prefontaine. “You mean you can run better than 13:21?” “No, I mean he’s dead.” If we take Hichem El Guerrouj and put him up against Sea Biscuit for a race of a mile, then Mr. Biscuit will kick his ass. Every day and twice on Sunday. Horses run the mile in under a minute, and El Garrouj did it in 3:43. However, apparently if the race is long enough, not only will the man overrun the horse, he will also OUTRUN it as well. There is no distinction between the 2. If I get into a race with someone, and halfway through I need to stop and get water and eat something, at the finish line I’m not gonna be all like “well, you overran me, but you didn’t outrun me, hahahaha you loser!” I’ll look pretty dumb, and might even get beat up. That 50 mile race where the guy won by 10 seconds… he won, they didn’t finish at the same time. [stupid vin diesel quote] Ask any racer… any REAL racer… It doesn’t matter if you win by 10 minutes or 10 seconds… winning is winning [/stupid vin diesel quote] I was going to say that both sides are right and wrong simultaneously (anyone think they can outrun Schrödinger’s cat?) but since the OP was talking about native Americans outrunning horses, I have to say that the people who contributed relevant info here are the ones that pointed out the fact that it is possible for a human to not only overrun, but outrun, a horse under the right circumstances, thusly making it possible for there to have been Native Americans who could indeed outrun horses. There were 86 words in that last “sentence.” ---
**Author:** ![artemis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/91b2a8/32.png) [@artemis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artemis)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-barefoot-18-hours-a-day-and-native-americans-outrunning-horses/244560/62 "2004-05-14T05:16:53Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > I don’t know who these non-horsepeope are that use the term in that way but until you provide a refernce I will continure to call bullshit. “Non-horsepeople” = “people who don’t ride or work around horses”. They don’t know that a trot is a gait with a brief moment of suspension in which all four hooves are off the ground (to the naked eye it appears there are always two legs on the ground at a trot); to them, “running” is what an animal is doing when it’s moving as fast as it can - and that’s certainly not a trot. This isn’t exactly something that requires a reference. Go out and ask a few average people and confirm it for yourself. > [@Blake](#): > > Ahem. Did you not catch the bit where I clearly said “They have four basic gaits”? Grandmothers and eggs atermis. You didn’t say “four basic gaits”; you said “four gaits”, which is not true. Horses have more than four gaits. > [@Blake](#): > > Well this is GQ so: > > CITE! Any basic text on preparing horses for combined training, flat racing, or harness racing. Horses require rigorous training to become fit enough to maintain high speed over distance; they also require large amounts of calorically-dense feed. Do you honestly believe that wild horses follow a rigorous aerobic conditioning program and eat 16 quarts of oats or sweet feed every dayin addition to grass? > [@Blake](#): > > When you show the evidence we’ll discuss it. And remember it’s not just that they aren’t as fit, since opbviously thye won’t be. It needs to be evidence that they are nowhere near as fit. That to me means that they will be travelleing at least 50% slower… Less fit means not being able to sustain a given speed as long, not that they can’t achieve the speed at all. A wild horse may be able to trot as fast as a stakes-winning Standardbred trotter for a few hundred yards - but the Standardbred can keep that blazingly fast trot up for two miles; the wild horse can’t. I can run just as fast as a marathon runner - but I can’t keep doing it for a mile, much less 26 miles. The difference between my fitness and the marathon runner’s is similar to the difference between the fitness of a wild horse and a domestic horse that been successfully conditioned for racing or for long-distance riding. Wild horses simply never need to trot steadily for 25 miles, so they never become fit enough to do it, just as an average person engaging in their usual patterns of daily activity never becomes aerobically fit enough to run a marathon successfully. > [@Blake](#): > > Cite! What’s average? How are you defining this? US Army Calvary Manual. You might want to read a few books on training horses for endurance racing, too; you’ll find they say the same thing. And “average” is just that - average. An ordinary saddle horse, of the type you can find at any hacking stable or working ranch. > [@Blake](#): > > Won’t even coment on triedness after the event since it’s totally irrelevant to the discussion. Not irrelevant at all; it’s an illustration of a major difference between human and horse physiology - humans rebound more quickly from sustained exercise than horses do, although horses are capable of bursts of speed a human runner could never possibly reach. ---
**Author:** ![kabbes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e99b99/32.png) [@kabbes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kabbes)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-barefoot-18-hours-a-day-and-native-americans-outrunning-horses/244560/63 "2004-05-14T09:49:18Z")
> [@The\_Llama](#): > > **kabbes** I’m just saying they haven’t dominated as much as the men have over the years. If you look at the present world records as well as the top 2004 times so far, African women don’t have the same percentage of people in the top spots as the men do. However, I was just looking at the current world rankings, and the Africans have like 6 of the top 10 spots in the 5000m-10,000m rankings. I guess I wasn’t following the womens side as closely as I should be. I would imagine that one reason for African women being less successful in the past was simple relative mysogenism keeping them from competing on a level playing field with the Europeans. And as I said, the percentage of world distance records means little, since you must ignore the 3k, 5k and 10k Chinese records as they were set, without any shadow of a doubt, using performance-enhancing substances. To the extent that there is a substantial body of opinion in the IAF that they should be stricken from the record. As you say, today African women account for 6 of the top 10. On personal opinion, I’d go further and say that they account for 4 of the top 5. And will continue to do so, so long as conditions continue as you described in your first and very interesting post. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-barefoot-18-hours-a-day-and-native-americans-outrunning-horses/244560.md?page=3)