which of the following best represents the average speed of a fast runner?

The Tarahumara (who call themselves Rarámuri) are a Native American people from the Sierra Madre Occidental of northwestern Mexico, also known as the Sierra Tarahumara. Although the Tarahumara do not train to run in any traditional Western sense, and not all of them are great runners, the Tarahumara, like many Native American peoples, consider running, along with other endurance-based activities, to be important social and spiritual pursuits. Long-distance running is also related to endurance dances that have important spiritual dimensions. Running during hunting, moreover, is linked to men’s and women’s footraces, and both kinds of running are considered powerful forms of prayer. We detail how running played an integral role in persistence hunting, in which groups of hunters employed a variety of methods to chase animals on foot.

Some characterizations of Tarahumara running are also based on stereotypical views of athleticism among non-Western peoples, here labeled the “fallacy of the athletic savage.” To place Tarahumara running more appropriately into its larger social and functional contexts, we combined our own observations and ethnographic evidence with interviews of 10 elderly Tarahumara runners about running during hunting as well as during footraces. The Tarahumara (Rarámuri) are a Native American people from Chihuahua, Mexico, who have long been famous for running, but there is widespread incredulity about how and why they run such long distances.

Aaron Baggish is Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Cardiovascular Performance Program, Massachusetts General Hospital (55 Fruit Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA). Ian Wallace is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico (502 West Redondo Drive, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, USA). Nicholas Holowka is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo (380 Fillmore Academic Center, Ellicott Complex, North Campus, Buffalo, New York 14261, USA). Silvino Cubesare Quimare is a Tarahumara farmer and runner who lives in Huisuchi and Guachochi, México (Calle Concido, Guachochi, Chihuahua, Mexico 67243). Mickey Mahaffey is a farmer and project coordinator for various support programs for Tarahumara (23 Lake Drive F1, Hendersonville, North Carolina 28739, USA). Daniel Lieberman is a Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University (11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA ]).

Which of the following best represents the average speed of a fast runner?