what differences would you see in the heart of a world class distance athlete?
970619
This is not a matter of size or morphology, rather athletes have improved stroke volumes, and thus improved cardiac outputs compared to normal individuals.  This also means that they can sustain normal homoeostasis and metabolic activity during rest at lower heart rates than normal individuals.  Normal adults have resting heart rates over 70 beats/min, athletes normally below 70 and closer to 60 even.
853784
Long distance running.
895864
I don't know about bones, but I know that there have been studies into muscle types of many African tribes, and some have a higher percentage of "fast twitch" fibres in their muscles, mainly those from the south and west of Africa. This may give them an advantage in sprint runs and jumping events, where short spurts of energy are required. However, I don't know why the Kenyans are so good at long distance events. Fantastic to watch though.
1100460
Be at least one of the following\n\n1)  an amazing athlete\n2)  a bodybuilder\n3)  6' 10" inches tall or more\n\nIf you aren't one of these, you have no chance.
1051539
I went to school with olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis.  Very nice, down to earth.  I ran into him years later at the mall...still the same!
1467
If you ask me in terms of running, I would definitely say professional. In that same line, I would suggest reading the book "Sub 4:00: Alan Webb and the Quest for the Fastest Mile." The book does a very good job, I thought, explaning the collegiate system, and its drawback, and makes a comparison at the end with the professional racing and training. \n\nYou can find the book at your public library, beside it's a good book to read.
322996
I think the road runner is definitely the most proficient for distance running, while Speedy was more of a sprinter.
941355
First of all a marathon s 26.22 miles.  I would have to assume in the shape he was in and the diciplne he had.  He should be able to do it.\n\nSince\n1924 42.195 km 26.22 ml
1121439
Very difficult to break it down to one single event so, I'll give you my top 10 in order of peference:\n\n10.  Edwin Moses, who won gold medals in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Summer Olympics. Between 1977 and 1987, Moses won 107 consecutive finals (122 consecutive races) and set the world record  four times.\n\n9. Javier Sotomayor, who is the only man to exceed 8 foot in the (8'-½ in,2.45 meters ) in the High Jump, when  he set the world record on July 23, 1993 in Salamanca, Spain.\n\n8. Carl Lewis, matching Jesse Owens mark of 4 gold medals in a single Olympiad, the '84 Los Angeles Games.\n\n7. Carl Lewis, matching Al Oerter's feat of winning 4 gold medals for the same event in 4 consecutive Olympiads, when he won the long jump in the '96 Atlanta Games, matching his efforts in '84, '88 and '92.\n\n6. Michael Johnson winning both the 200m and 400m races in a single Olympics, during the 1996 Atlanta Games.  He easily captured the 400m Olympic title with a time of 43.49 beating Roger Black of Great Britain by almost one second. At the 200m final, Johnson achieved a peak speed of over 40 km/h (25 mph), and finished the race in 19.32 shattering the world record by a third of a second.\n\n5.  Al Oerter became the first track and field athlete to win consecutive gold medals for the same event over the period of FOUR Olympiads. Oerter, won the Discus thow at the '56, '60, '64 & '68 Olmpics.\n\n4. Jim Thorpe's perfomance at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Along with the decathlon and pentathlon, Thorpe contested the long jump and high jump as well, but his first event scheduled was the pentathlon. Thorpe was the class of the field, winning four events. He placed only third in the javelin, an event he had never done before 1912. \n\nThe same day he won the pentathlon gold, Thorpe qualified for the high-jump final. In that final, he placed fourth, and took seventh place in the long jump. Thorpe's final event was the decathlon, where tough competition from local favorite Hugo Wieslander was expected. But Wieslander was no match for Thorpe either, finishing some 700 points behind. Thorpe placed in the top four of all ten events.\n\n3. Jessie Owens. But not for winning the 4 Olympic Gold Medals in the 36' Games, but for an extraordinary day that took place a year earlier. In a span of 45 minutes on May 25, 1935 at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Owns tied the record for the 100 yard dash, set world records in the long jump, 220 yard dash, and 220 yard low hurdles. With the 220 times bettering the records for 200 meter equivalents, Owns set or tied SIX World record in less thane ONE hour.\n\n2. On May 6, 1954 during a meet between British AAA and Oxford University, Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute barrier;  with a time of 3 min 59.4. \n\n1. Bob Beamon's World record jump at the 1968 Mexico City Olymipic Games. Although Beamon was a favorite, his jump was completely unexpected.  From 1935 to 1968, the long jump world record had increased only 8.25" from 26' 8'-1/2 to 27' 4-3/4. With a single jump, Beamon added nearly 22" to the record in a single day.
854853
You need to have a mixture of both distance work and speedwork and you will run faster over any distance.Its as simple and clear cut as that
169535
Strong muscles, high speed,good entegrety
272110
- Very fast\n- fit\n- jump high\n- good hand-eye coordination\n- ability to kcik accurately\n- good behaviour so you don't get suspended!
524496
That's Asafa Powell from JAMAICA. Only if he's healthy and the US team isn't. You see, it's two years til the games and we have a lot of young sprinters while Jamaica has only one of note...\n\nLet see how he does against Gatlin when they meet head-to-head....
931027
Your heart heart has to pump harder to go the distance \nto your legs, which also are larger and burn more oxygen\nbut the difference is small.
1128511
Well this would definetely depend on the position of a player. If you are talking about a right or left back that also is in every attack and if his team is playing up and down the whole time, he could make runs of upto 80 meters up and down no less then 10 times a game. and his other runs to the side and to the midfield etc. We are probably looking at about 3-6 kms.
772616
The pages listed under this information section  contain summaries of relevant topics written by many different experts in the field for the Montgomery Heart Foundation for Cardiomyopathy. The information contained in these summaries was originally collected in 1997 to put together a printed brochure for patients, families and health care professionals.  Although these summaries are now 6 or 7 years old, they have been re-reviewed and we believe  contain basic and general information that is still helpful to patients and families today.\n\n \nWhile the entity of the "athlete's heart" has been recognized for over 100 years, only in the last two decades has the application of echocardiography and other noninvasive imagine techniques permitted definition with some precision of the alterations in cardiac dimensions associated with athletic conditioning.  Echocardiography has demonstrated that long-term athletic training leads to an increase in left ventricular (LV) mass due to increases in LV diastolic cavity dimension, wall thickness, or both.  These changes in cardiac morphology are relatively mild in absolute terms, and the differences between athlete and non-athlete populations are statistically significant but generally small.  Furthermore, cardiac alterations associated with training differ somewhat depending on the particular sporting discipline in which the individual athlete participates.  In particular, the changes in LV wall thickness, cavity dimensions, or both associated with long-term athletic training may be more striking in certain sports such as distance running, swimming, cycling and rowing/canoeing.  It is in athletes raining in such sports that the differential diagnosis is more likely to be raised.\n\nDifferential Diagnosis\n \nDilated Cardiomyopathy\nIn an important minority of athletes, the increase in LV end-diastolic cavity dimension that occurs with training overlaps that which is characteristic of certain pathologic entities.  While LV cavity dimension is athletes is usually in the range of 53 to 58 mm, in some individuals it may extend into what is regarded as the pathological range of >60 mm (up to 70 mm), and thereby resemble dilated cardiomyopathy.  However, the absence of LV systolic dysfunction is usually sufficient to distinguish such physiologic ventricular enlargement induced by training from dilated cardiomyopathy. \n\nArrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia (ARVD)\nBecause highly trained athletes may demonstrate right ventricular enlargement and a variety of depolarization, repolarization and conduction abnormalities on the ECG, the differential diagnosis between athlete's heart and ARVD may arise.  Identification of ARVD by echocardiography may be exceedingly difficult because of technical limitations in imaging right heart morphology (and assessing right ventricular function), and also because the spectrum of disease is broad.  Demonstration of right ventricular segmental or global dysfunction or substantial cavity enlargement supports the diagnosis.  Magnetic resonance imaging, however, affords a more reliable noninvasive diagnosis of this condition.  In ARVD, ECG's frequently show T wave inversion in V1-V3.\n\nHypertrophic Cardiomyopathy\nThe dilemma of distinguishing clinically between athlete's heart and structural heart disease most frequently arises with respect to hypetrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).  While at present there is no single approach that will definitively resolve this question in all such athletes, several strategies are described here that alone or in combination offer a large measure of clarification in most instances for this often compelling differential diagnosis.  The definition of HCM employed here is that of a patient (or athlete) with evidence of a hypertrophied and nondilated LV in the absence of another cardiac of systemic disease that could itself produce hypetrophy of the magnitude present in that individual.\n\nWall Thickness\nIn
1076656
Their speed is amazing and fun to watch, but the guys who amaze me are the 400m guys, now THAT's a stud's race. A quarter mile race, flat out as hard and as fast as you can go. The USA puts out the BEST 400m men in the world and that's why we've won every 400m & 4x400 gold medal for the last 6 olympic games