Race In Running

When we talked about race and running in class today, it held a particular significance to me because I am on the track and cross country team.I had heard the "fast twitch theory" before, the idea that African-Americans are faster sprinters because their fast-twitch muscles are more proficient than white peoples'. It was interesting to me that there seems to be no actual biological evidence that African-Americans are faster runners. My question now is...so why are they?

At the state track meet in May I saw a definite distinction between the skin color of people in the short distance events to people in the longer distance events. In fact, 5/5 of the top finishers in the 200m were black, as opposed to the 5/5 top finishers in the 3200m who where white. Is it possible that the expectations on the athletes play a part in what event they choose to run? Is an African-American girl who shows talent in both elite distance running and elite sprinting more likely to chose sprinting that's where she feels she belongs based on previous sprinting feats by black women? If this is true than that could mean that African-Americans aren't neccessarily better at sprinting, there are just more of them that focus on sprinting instead of disntence because they expect to be better at it and it is "cooler" for that "race" (race is loosely defined after our in-class discussion).