One Kenyan Tribe Produces the World's Best Runners

For a longer audio piece about this topic, which uses the same primary sources (Epstein and Manners) as this 2013 NPR piece, see the RadioLab show "Cut and Run" at http://www.radiolab.org/story/runners/ .

"Manners says that this enormous social pressure placed on your ability to endure pain is actually great training for a sport like running where "pushing through pain" is so fundamental to success."

Given that this is tradition, and failures are labelled cowards, I wonder if this is actually evolution in action (rather than nurture)? Presumably the "cowards" are likely to have less reproductive success?

The comment on ankle weights was interesting. I'd like to see some event where ankle weight is measured and all runners get added weight to bring them up to the heavies ankle weight. I don't think this is how races should be run but it would be interesting to see the results if you adjust for this. Might even be possible to calculate some ankle-weight coefficient and apply it to race times to get an interesting data point.