@Sweder, who was off running up Antipodean mountains, recounts somewhere on the Running Commentary fora an observation the late Moyleman made at a Brighton race. Both of them arrived late and, as they caught up with the back of the race and, as they made their their way through the field, Moyleman observed that the size of runners’ bottoms decreased. He postulated a relationship between running speed and bottom size that has been born out empirically at many events since and deserves to be known by the names of its discoverer.

I thought a great deal about this as I ran this familiar course, trod by me for the seventh consecutive year today. Time was when I whizzed round, recording a personal best of 45:25 in 2005. Today I plodded, towards the back of the race. I try not to look at other runners’ bottoms too much at races; people can get the wrong idea. Nevertheless I saw enough to be able to tell that many of the runners in my pace-group had buttocks of considerable mass.

In warm conditions, and with little room for manoeuvre at the part of the course where the slower runners meet the faster ones coming back, it was hard work, but the last 3.5K particularly hard. By the time I was within a kilometre of the finish, I found myself able to speed up for a few metres, but unable to sustain it for longer, falling back to a plod. Nevertheless, I finished in under an hour, 56:23 being my official chip time.

Update: I have located, with help from its author, the post in which Moyle’s law was first articulated. And, if you want to read about real running, try this: Point 2 Pinnacle