Hallie Gebrselassie

You would expect the greatest runner of all time to look different from everyone else, and up close Geb most certainly did. I was not struck by his diminutiveness, having known already that his stats were 5′3″, 112 lbs. I was struck by how impossibly narrow his waist was, how short his trunk, and how his thigh muscles seemed to bulge against the tights he wore despite their small girth. As we shuffled along at 9:00/mile I tried to match my cadence to his but could not get it that high. His heels never touched the ground the whole way. Geb is a true, literal forefoot striker. -Matt Fitzgerald, describing Hallie Gebrselassie Ethiopian Review