The Perfect Stride
Can Alberto Salazar straighten out American distance running?
by Jennifer Kahn November 8, 2010

If on Sunday, November 7th, you watch the New York City Marathon, chances are that one of the first things you’ll see is a pack of emaciated-looking men hurtling down the street at a little over twelve miles an hour, or about four minutes and fifty-five seconds a mile. To the onlooker, they will be an incomprehensible blur: a stampede of sharp-elbowed, highly focussed gazelles, so economical in their motion that they hardly seem to be touching the ground at all.