Check the this article from Discover Magazine - http://discovermagazine.com/2006/may/tramps-like-us
It posits some very interesting evidence that humans are quite possibly the best runners on the planet - better even then antelope, cheetas, horses, even dogs! The theory is that our lack of fur and our abundance of sweat glands combine to give us greater than endurance than any other animal (indeed, I had heard that in 2004, 20 mile race between a horse and a man, the man won!). Obvious we can't out sprint a cheetah, but as some Native Africans can still show us today, two people can manage to out run an antelope to the point of exhaustion in order to bring back meet to their families!
The big surprise is that every other prodigous runner has one advantage over us - a tail. It is the easiest way to maintain balance during the tumolt of muscles vs. inertia of running. Complicated analyses of human locomation illustrate that we make up for the lack of a tail with a feature unique to humans - our gigantic, fat asses. No other primate can hold a candle to the human in terms of ass-muscle volume per body size, and electric impulse testing shows that our rearends are finely tuned to help runners maintain balance and not fall on our faces with every step.
The hypothesis is that running helped us chase down our game after humans decended from the trees and that without the rich stores of fat and protein garnered from fresh game, we could never have maintained the biological requirements of our developing brains. The evidence for this is a special ligament that attaches our shoulders and backs to our skulls, allowing our skulls to remain fixed and focused during an all out sprint. This is a feature unique to predatory animals that are chasing after a goal, say, a yummy bison on the horizon, rather than just sprinting like hell to escape a lion.
Read the artical for further information but I found it very interesting! Or better yet, go out there and run! Run like you were meant to!
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