Training response of adolescent Kenyan town and village boys to endurance running

To investigate the response to endurance training on physiological characteristics, 10 Nandi town boys and 14 Nandi village boys 16.5 and 16.6 years of age, respectively, from western Kenya performed 12 weeks of running training. The study was performed at altitude (∼2000 m.a.s.l. ∼595 mm Hg). Training heart rate and speed were registered during every training session throughout the entire training period. While town and village boys trained at similar heart rates (172.1 vs. 172.5 beats min−1), the training speed of the town boys was 9% lower compared with the village boys (12.4 vs. 13.6 km h−1, P