RUNNERS: AIR QUALITY MATTERS

RUNNERS: AIR QUALITY MATTERS Most runners don’t give air quality much thought when gearing up for a marathon. But maybe they should. New research out of Brown University’s School of Public Health suggests that the air you breathe on race day could be the difference between a personal best and a tough slog. The study, published in Sports Medicine, looked at how tiny airborne particles—known as delicate particulate matter—affect marathon finish times. The results? Runners who compete on more polluted days tend to finish slower. The difference wasn’t huge—an extra 32 seconds for men, 25 for women, for every slight uptick in air pollution—but as any marathoner can tell you, every second counts. “Just think about all the time, money, and sheer effort someone like Eliud Kipchoge spends chasing that sub-two-hour marathon,” said Elvira Fleury, who led the research as a grad student at Brown and is now at Harvard. “Top athletes obsess over shoes, training, nutr...