Hey that's an 80's throwback. Is Tamilee still looking like that today?

Hefty - have you ever really looked at world class sprinters (100m-200m runners) or 'pure speed' players in the NFL like wide recievers / running backs? A lot of these guys (and gals) have big butts. Not big as in they need to lose weight big, but big muscular glutes. Watch some of the Track & Field at this summers Olympics to see what I'm talking about. For pure power production large powerful gluteal muscles will definitely help. However, when it comes to endurance, large gluteal muscles will be just like large powerful muscles anywhere else - they will tire quickly and slow you down. In other words doing 'buns' workouts won't help you run a 7-minute mile

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By 1000 A.D., the Vikings from Norway had established colonies in Greenland, and in the year 1009 Thorfinn Karlsefni set out to explore a new land that had been discovered to the West, Vinland. He had been given two Scottish runners, a man named Haki and a woman Hekja, both reputedly fleeter than deer. When Karlsefni arrived in this new land, he put ashore the Scots, ordering them to run south, to discover the nature of the land and to come back before three days had passed. The runners wore only a bjafal or kjafal, a hooded poncho, which fastened between the legs. It is likely that the Scots explored what later became known as Newfoundland. They returned three days later carrying grapes and self-sewn wheat, which may sound surprising today, but 1,000 years ago the province had a warmer climate than at present.

Native Americans that the Scots may have met would have been part of the running culture that permeated the entire continent. There were, in fact, extensive trading routes throughout pre-Columbian America, used by traders and their porters traveling on foot. Within this wider context, early European settlers were to record networks of runners that tied tribes together. In the Northeast, in what was to become New York state, the Iroquois Confederacy was held together by running messengers who could cover the 240-mile Iroquois Trail within three days. In the far South, Aztec relay runners brought their king, Montezuma, news of the Spaniard Cortez' landing at Chianiztlan, covering the 260 miles in relay fashion within 24 hours. In 1680, a network of Hopi and Zuni runners coordinated a revolt against their Spanish conquerors among some 70 pueblos or villages, covering over 300 miles in what is now Arizona and New Mexico.

Without horses, using only dogs as pack animals, Native Americans were conditioned to cover great distances on foot from an early age. It was recorded that Apache Indians, who were renowned for their toughness, at the age of 15 or 16 had to undertake a long run over rough country carrying a load on their back. Young men would be expected to go without sleep in a vigil that could last 48 hours. They then were required to go out into the wilds for two weeks, living through their own skill and toughness. An adult Apache could travel on foot over the roughest terrain from fifty to seventy-five miles a day, keeping this up for several days at a stretch.

Outstanding runners in such a culture would become key figures in holding together widespread associations, such as the Iroquois Confederacy, or even loose groupings of proximal tribes, by carrying news and other urgent messages. A typical example of the role such runners played is recorded in Peter Nobokov's excellent book "Indian Running." In the 1860s a messenger runner of the Mesquakie tribe in his mid-fifties ran 400 miles from Green Bay, Wisconsin to warn Sauk Indians along the Missouri River of an enemy attack. Such messenger runners were probably part of the culture of the Sauk, Creek, Omaha, Kickapoo, Osage, and Menominee tribes, and possibly many others. Such runners dedicated their lives to this endeavor, following a strict diet and often practicing celibacy. On their runs they would carry a dried buffalo heart.

We can get some idea of the kind of distances such runners covered from the journals of early settlers. As early as 1794, James Emlen wrote that Sharp Shins, one of the Iroquois Confederacy messengers, ran 90 miles from Canandaigua to Niagara between sunrise and sunset.

In 1835, a correspondent to The Spirit of the Times newspaper told of a Native American who had run 100 miles in a day carrying a sixty-pound bar of lead. Another wrote of a member of the Osage tribe to skeptical members of the Indian Commission. Seeking to prove his veracity, he proposed a wager. An Indian was to take a message to Fort Gibson at sunrise and return with an answer before sunset, a round-trip journey of some 80 miles. The wager was won.

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