muscle fatigue dominated in the shortest trials, while central fatigue was increasingly important in the longer ones. In fact, the maximal force measurements taken during the longer trials showed that fatigue in the muscles themselves soon reached a fairly stable plateau at about 80 percent of full strength, which persisted until the subjects launched into their finishing kick at the end of the trial. That suggests that the importance of purely muscle-based fatigue in long events has been, if anything, overestimated by previous studies. If your leg muscles are really shot at the end of a
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