Kickin' it on Katie's blog

Chapter 13:  This chapter starts off speaking on Evans Kiplagat, who to me, seems like a super human that trains and runs miles on top of miles everyday. Apparently, numerous Kenyans do this everyday, and if they have talent to run, they believe that it is never too late to train.  We then transition back to Pitsiladis' research work he has done with the Kenyans, Kalenjins, and Jamaicans. According to Pitsiladis' work, he has found that runners from Kenya are mostly from the Kalenjin tribe, grew up in poor or rural areas, and would hike miles to get to school had a higher aerobic capacity on average than their peers. Is that genetic or cultural? Pitsiladis would say it's a socioeconomic phenomenon.  I find it extremely interesting that the high altitude in Kenya and Ethiopia is what may help the trainability of these athletes. If it actually does have such an impact, why aren't more avid runners and competitors coming down to these parts and training there as well? This

 Chapter 12: Can every Kalenjin Run?  The chapter talks about the KenSAP which is an initiative that aims to get the best Kenyan students from the western Rift Valley into premier colleges in the U.S.  The Western Rift Valley is home to the Kalenjins, who represent about 12% of Kenya's population, but over 75% of Kenya's best runners. One theory is that their running abilities date back to their cattle raiding skills. I liked reading about Manner's "great tryout" through KenSAP which seemed to produce some pretty successful runners, confirming their specific group had some sort athletic gene. What about them was so special though? Manner thought it could be a differece in the muscle fibers.  One study that really interested me was by the University of Copenhagen's Muscle Research Centre that compared Kenyan runners to Danish boys living in Copenhagen. Kalenjin boys from villages had higher VO2max from Kalenjin boys from cities, but it was similar to the active

 Chapter 10: The Warrior-Slave Theory of Jamaican Sprinting Morrison and Pitsiladis had one shared scientific goal: to untangle the factors, genetic, and environmental, that have made a tiny island of 3 million into the world's sprint factory. They had papers written together and papers written separately, but the conclusion of the papers on the issue of nature vs nurture were very different. Pitsiladis seemed to put every last ounce of his effort into his research of the best athletes genes and if their DNA had anything to do with that. That is also what I believe to be our point in reading this book in class.  He was determined to find the answers. He has traveled countless places, been denied funding to examine the genes of athletes, so much so that he paid for his research out of his own pocket, remortgaging his house twice. That is pure dedication. Why is the research so important to him? He was fighting for his science,  he even had a man that was helping him with his researc

Chapter 9 of The Sports Gene is titles "We are All Black (Sort of.)" This chapter is about different genetic and DNA testing of different people and populations all around the globe with a scientist named Kenneth Kidd. He aimed to categorize genetic variation around the world by looking at corresponding stretches of DNA in different populations and seeing how they are different. Using the information he obtained, he, along with geneticist Sarah Tiskoff, drew a family tree for everyone on Earth. After all their work, they supported the "recent African origin" model that basically says every human outside of Africa can trace their ancestry to one population that lived in sub-Saharan East Africa as recently as 90,000 years ago. This was super interesting to me and I was very intrigued from this point which is weird because I have never actually been a person to be super interested in where we all came from and the science behind that.  There are so many theories and no

Chapter 7: The Big Bang of Body Types      I have always grown up saying if I was built a little taller, skinnier, stronger, etc… that I would be so much better at soccer, lacrosse, etc. I still say that today. This chapter begins with saying how not only technology has evolved, but the gene pool of athletes in elite sports has also. There was a belief that there was a one-size fits all generally physical build that the best athletes would have, until scientists realized more specialized body types fit better with different sports. The more research that has been diving into specific body characteristics, the more scientists are pointing out how the human body has been evolving in each sport.        One of the most famous studies of athletic body types ever conducted took a full year to complete and researched over 1,265 athletes who competed in the Olympics. There was an athlete for every sport, and 92 different countries. After 6 years of compiling the results and publishing the rese