ESPN: These researchers think poop could unlock athletic supremacy. Are they right? “Scheiman went to great pains to obtain the roughly 400 samples in this freezer. Each one started with a somewhat uncomfortable conversation with the athlete — he approached them noting that he’s a scientist and that they’d be helping with an experiment about the microbiome, all before circling around to the request for a fecal sample. He then spent hours every day driving around the greater Boston area to pick up samples from donors’ homes. Each of the samples contains millions of bacteria; he put them in the freezer to keep them viable for later study, the way you might store a leftover lasagna.” (Although, I wouldn’t recommend keeping them in the same section of the freezer.)

+ “A new analysis by The New York Times, an update of the one conducted last summer, suggests that the advantage these shoes bestow is real — and larger than previously estimated. At the moment, they appear to be among only a handful of popular shoes that matter at all for race performance, and the gap between them and the next-fastest popular shoe has only widened.” Nike’s Fastest Shoes May Give Runners an Even Bigger Advantage Than We Thought.