Hamilton man wins Buffalo Marathon while pushing his 2-year-old son, asleep in his stroller

You're comparing completely different types of motion; there's no reason to assume the same rules apply.

You say it could reduce the weight load, but

  1. As someone else said, a stroller isn't designed to bear any weight and will tip with a few pounds of force applied, so it does not do what you think it does

  2. Even if it did, unloading weight onto your outstretched arms is even more tiring, so if he were doing that you'd see him running with the handle pressed in by his hips to brace it on his torso

  3. Even if it did, what makes it so clear that less weight is an advantage? Having coasted on many a shopping cart, I can say that leaning on something reduces how much traction you can get and consequently how much power you can get in a stride; it only helps if you can coast between strides.

The difference is that the DDR player needs a lot of dexterity and no power, and the runner needs the exact opposite.

If it were of any help, I would guess it'd be more to do with the stability reducing how much energy is wasted bobbing up and down, or with the added weight helping more on downhills than it hinders on uphills, that sort of thing. But having run with a stroller before, I find that it severely hinders the torso rotation required to have a balanced gait, and I find it really hard to believe it could be an advantage (though that's only speculative too, to be fair).

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