How Fast Can a Human Run? (Published 2020) (2024)

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Good Question

Two legs are good. Four legs might be better.

— Steve in Davis, Calif.

So far, the fastest anyone has run is about 27½ miles per hour, a speed reached (briefly) by sprinter Usain Bolt just after the midpoint of his world-record 100-meter dash in 2009.

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This speed limit probably is not imposed by the strength of our bones and tendons. Rather, a 2010 study suggested that the limit comes from our bipedal stride, in particular how quickly we can rearrange our legs while still leaving time to push off from the ground.

Peter G. Weyand, a biomechanics researcher and physiologist at Southern Methodist University and one of the authors of the 2010 study, said that our running speed is limited because we are in the air for most of our stride. During the brief moments that our feet are touching the ground, we have to exert a lot of force.

“If I have to point to one mechanical limit for bipedal runners, from all the work that we’ve done, it’s the minimum period of foot ground contact,” he said. “A human who’s really fast, like Usain Bolt, is on the ground roughly 42 or 43 percent of the total stride time. But for a fast-running quadruped” — a cheetah, a horse — “it’s two-thirds of the stride time.”

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