The Race Within a Race: Starting Together, Finishing Apart.

Every four years the world's best athletes come together to compete in the Olympic games, electrifying audiences with incredible feats of speed, strength, endurance and skill as personal best performances and new records are set. However, the exceptional talent that underpin such performances is incomprehensible to most casual observers who often cannot appreciate how unique these athletes are. In this regard, endurance running, specifically the marathon, a 42.195 km foot race, provides one of the few occasions in sport outside of Olympic, world and national competitions, that permits sport scientists and fans alike to directly compare differences in the physiology between recreational and elite competitors. While these individuals may all cover the same distance, on the same course, on the same day - their experience and the physiological and psychological demands placed upon them are vastly different. There is, in effect, a "race within a race". In the current review we highlight the superior physiology of the elite endurance athlete, emphasizing the gap between elite competitors and well-trained, but less genetically endowed athletes. We draw attention to a range of inconsistencies in how current sports science practices are understood, implemented, and communicated in terms of the elite and not-so-elite endurance athlete.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest ☒ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. ☐ The author is an Editorial Board Member/Editor-in-Chief/Associate Editor/Guest Editor for [Journal name] and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article. ☐ The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:
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