Do faster runners have longer toes?

That is a hypothesis investigated by Stephen Piazza and Sabrina Lee at The Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

Their work was published in The Journal of Experimental Biology, an abstract of which is available in PDF form.

A key finding?

Sprinters’ toes were almost one centimeter longer than non-sprinters’ toes.

A likely benefit of longer toes is that your foot would stay in contact with the ground for a longer period during each stride, which in turn would give you more time to push away and thereby beat slower runners.

This report made me wonder:

• Would running shoes with a longer toe-box could give you some of the same benefit?
• Do people with larger feet generally have longer toes and therefore generally run faster than people with shorter feet?

What do you think? Please leave a comment here. Thanks!