instantaneous speed?

Rickshaw · Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2005 9:00 am

Saturday morning musings: what do you think is the fastest instantaneous speed that a human can achieve on a flat course? A trained runners average speed will be faster for 200m than 400m, faster still for 100m. Is the average speed of a 50m event faster than for a 100m? If I used a radar gun to clock athletes, and told them to do whatever they wanted in order to achieve their "top speed", what would be the best approach, and how fast would they go?

My guess, based on no facts whatsoever, is that a race of maybe 80m would have the fastest average speed. Anything longer and you start to get tired, anything shorter and the time it takes to get out of the starting blocks and accelerate dominates the actual running. To achieve top speed, I think you'd just run 80m. Maybe if you dove ahead at the 80m line, you could get a brief boost in instantaneous speed.