Details
- Title: Energetics and Big Data Approach Explain Ecological Running Speeds
- Speaker: Jess Selinger, PhD, Queens University
- Time: Wednesday, August 31st, 2022 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time
This event has passed. View the recorded talk and additional resources below.
Abstract
Human runners have long been thought to have the ability to consume a near-constant amount of energy per distance traveled, regardless of speed, allowing speed to be adapted to particular task demands with minimal energetic consequence. However, recent and more precise laboratory measures indicate that humans may in fact have an energy-optimal running speed. Here, Dr. Selinger and colleagues use activity tracking data from thousands of free-living runners to determine if real-world preferred speeds are consistent with task- or energy-dependent objectives.
In the first half of the webinar, Dr. Selinger will show that free-living runners, most often out for a jog and not a race, prefer a particular running speed largely independent of run distance. Moreover, these preferred speeds are remarkably consistent with the objective of minimizing energy expenditure. These findings offer insight into the biological objectives that shape human running preferences in the real world—an important consideration when examining human ecology or creating training strategies to improve performance and prevent injury.
In the second half of the webinar, Dr. Selinger will discuss best practices for, and share lessons learned from, working with large-scale physical activity data from wearables. In particular, she will present examples from her work of how to: 1. identify and combine datasets to answer your question of interest, 2. clean and prepare your datasets for analysis, and 3. challenge and verify the robustness of your conclusions.
Selinger, J.C., Hicks, J.L., Jackson, R.W., Wall-Scheffler, C.M., Chang, D., Delp, S.L. Running in the wild: Energetics explain ecological running speeds. Current Biology 32, 2309-2315 (2022)
This webinar is offered jointly with the Restore Center, an NIH-funded Medical Rehabilitation Research Resource Network Center at Stanford University.
About Our Speaker
Jess Selinger, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dr. Jessica Selinger is an Assistant Professor in Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University, Ontario Canada. She received her PhD in the Department of Biomedical Physiology & Kinesiology at Simon Fraser University in 2016, where her doctoral work was funded by the Vanier Graduate Scholarship. From 2016 to 2018 she was a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford University Mobilize Center. Her research is focused on understanding the fundamental principles that underlie the neuromechanics of legged locomotion, and the application of these principles to wearable and assistive technologies that can improve human mobility and overall health. In 2021 she was the recipient of the Canadian Society of Biomechanics David Winter Young Investigator Award.
