Had you heard of the theory "six degrees of separation"? Basically it states that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of "a friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularized by a 1990 play written by John Guare.
Well, I wondered if runners are six or less steps away from any other runner in the world where a connection is when two people have been in the same race.
It would be interesting to get hold of all UK race data (maybe the power of 10) to see, on average, how many steps away UK runners are from each other. For two runners who have been running for 5+ years and racing about 10 races a year the average might be suprisingly low.
What do you think?
