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Opinion | Farah Stockman

Minds built to go the distance

By Farah Stockman

 |  Globe Columnist  

  April 17, 2012

A Kenyan man has won the marathon every year for all but two of the last 22 years. Kenyan women have won nine of the last 13. Their dominance has prompted a flurry of scientific studies into why Kenyans run so well. Some say it’s their diet. Others say it’s the high altitude. But those theories fail to account for perhaps the most important factors: the marathoner’s brain, and his or her concept of distance itself.

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