New York's Winner Lands Half a Leg in Front of His Hips. That Isn't the Fault.

We ran the race photos through Flapp, our running-form app:

• Elite runners land 0.18–0.45 leg lengths ahead of the hip. Almgren is at the far end. For a 90 cm leg, 0.45 is about 40 cm.
• Their shins stay within 13° of vertical, knee bent. Every one of them.
• Amateur reaches in our test photos land just as far ahead, 0.42–0.51, but on a nearly straight leg with the shin tipped back 19–24°.

Same distance, different leg

"Land under your hips" works at an easy pace, not a fast one. Up to about 7 m/s you go faster mostly by lengthening the stride (Dorn 2012), so the foot lands further ahead. Almgren averaged 5.6 m/s.

Lieberman's study separates two things. The further the foot lands ahead of the hip, the more it brakes: Almgren pays that, like every fast runner. The further it lands ahead of the knee, the shin tipped back, the sharper the impact: that's the reach. A bent knee lets the thigh muscles take the landing over a few centimetres; a straight leg tipped back is a strut, and the load arrives at once. The authors' advice: land with "a relatively vertical tibia."

Touchdown	Overstride	Shin	Knee
Almgren, NYC 2026 (2 frames)	0.45	−12.3°, −12.6°	150°, 151°
Paige Wood, NYC 2026	0.39	−3°	137°
McClain, NYC 2026 ¹	0.38	−6°	145°
Eliud Kipchoge, NYC 2025	0.34	−3°	144°
Kiptum, Chicago 2023	0.37	−12°	158°
Pros, Chicago 2026 ²	0.23, 0.18	0°, +13°	153°, 131°
Amateur reaches, our test set	0.42–0.51	−19° to −24°	157–178°

Overstride in leg lengths ahead of the hip. Shin: negative means the foot landed ahead of the knee. ¹ Shot from three-quarters in front, which shortens the overstride. ² Not identified.

Two frames, one number

Almgren's two frames come from different photographers at different spots and agree within a degree: overstride 0.448 and 0.445, shin −12.3° and −12.6°. Either he lands the same way every stride, or both caught the same step. Either way, two cameras gave one answer.

Our band calls him "on the edge"

Flapp treats a shin within 10° of vertical as fine. Almgren (−12.3°, −12.6°) and Kiptum (−11.7°) come out amber. The band was set at everyday paces; at 5.6 m/s a little more lean may be normal. Eight elite frames aren't enough to move it.

Heel or midfoot?

Flapp read one Almgren frame as midfoot and the other as heel, with knee, hip and shin matching within 1.5°. From a single frame, foot strike is a coin toss. Most marathoners at the 2017 World Championships landed heel first anyway (Hanley 2019). The heel isn't the problem. The shin might be.

Check your own

Film or photograph yourself side-on at the instant your foot lands:

1. Shin within ~10° of vertical, knee bent: you land like the elites, however far ahead of the hip.
2. Shin back 15° or more, knee nearly straight: that's the reach. Try a slightly quicker cadence (see overstriding).

Try it in Flapp

How we measured

Flapp's pose model finds the hip, knee, ankle, heel and toe. At touchdown it measures the hip-to-ankle distance in leg lengths, the shin's angle and the knee; a far landing leg is measured from its own hip. We used only side-on frames at the instant of landing. Chepkirui, Obiri and Kipruto were only in flight or at push-off in our photos, so they're out. Eleven frames: examples, not a study.