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Discovery: The Need for Speed

Discovery: The Need for Speed: Episode 2: Human Speed

23/07/2008

Episode 2: Human Speed

The Need for Speed

BBC World Service - Discovery, The Need for Speed, Episode 2: Human Speed

Gareth Mitchell asks whether the human body has a speed limit.

What’s the speed limit of the human body? That’s the question Gareth Mitchell will be asking in Discovery - The Need for Speed.

What makes some people fast sprinters whereas others are more suited to endurance marathons? 

In this programme, Gareth Mitchell, a self-confessed sceptic when it comes to the joys of running, visits the Human Performance Laboratory at Bath University to be put through his paces. 

Before the programme, he'd never been on a treadmill before, and didn't even own a pair of trainers. So is his body designed for speed or endurance? Or neither?

He also talks to sports scientists like Prof Bob Girandola from the University of Southern California. He thinks we've reached the pinnacle of natural human achievement, and any further improvement will depend on altering our genes or taking performance enhancing drugs.

So will we keep on breaking speed records, or have we reached the speed limit of the human body?

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Gareth Mitchell asks whatever happened to the supersonic age?

Whatever happened to the supersonic age? Gareth Mitchell asks whether our need for speed has hit the buffers.

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