This year it seems like course records throughout trail running have been dropping like flies. UltraRunning Magazine lists hundreds of new records for both men and women on their site. Some of these records are decades old. Are we getting faster? It sure seems like that. Alex Hutchinson has also been wondering this and decided to do his science thing and find out the truth. In his recent OutsideOnline article "Why Are Runners Suddenly So Fast? Records are falling and times are dropping. Is it the shoes, or something else?" he filters through the statistics to answer the question.

Read Alex's other articles at OutsideOnline here

Visit his web site and get his book Endure: Mind Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance