Does your height affect your running?

Question

Somebody small will have less Resistance from the air but take smaller steps then somebody who is tall.

Are long people better at long distance runs,
small people better in short distance or does it even matter?

Answer 1

I would say resistance to the air would be almost irrelevant here, what we will impact a lot it would be the longer steps for short (sprinting distances) where probably taller people are in an advantage but in the other side, tallness comes with a cost, a less economic run, so they will be much more difficult to keep up good paces in long distances.

Some interesting information here, where I extracted this quote:

Height hits economy

Speaking of economy, mum probably didn't mention that the taller you are, the more miserable (that's miserable, not miserly) is your economy. But - it's true. As height increases, it costs more to run at a particular pace, even when the cost is expressed per kilogram of body weight. Research in France bears this out ('Influence of Training, Sex, Age, and Body Mass on the Energy Cost of Running,' European Journal of Applied Physiology, vol. 66(5), pp. 439-444, 1993).

Why would that be true? Analyzing the situation, mum used to like to say that bone mass increases exponentially, not linearly, as a function of height, which means that taller runners have both absolutely and relatively heavier bones, compared to shorties. It costs energy to lug those bones around, so economy dips. Small wonder that the majority of world-class marathoners tend to be relatively slight figures. Of course, lack of economy doesn't faze sprinters, the best of whom tend to be fairly tall. Their goal in running is to maximize power, not worry about saving a millilitre of oxygen here and there, and power maximization tends to mean long limbs and rippling muscles.

Answer 2

Height may be a factor, but it is probably really only going to matter in the weight, as alluded to in the other answer. Apocryphal lore among runners is that every pound of body weight either gained or lost, will result in a time difference of +/- 3 to 5 seconds. So if you lose 5 pounds, theoretically you can gain 15-25 seconds per mile for the same effort. This is affected greatly by other factors, however, such as training history, running efficiency and economy, things like this. However, there is a point where any further weight loss also results in lost muscle, so there is no real "set" formula to determine an ideal weight.

What is going to matter much more is the composition of the muscle fibers and the proportions of fast twitch to slow twitch. Someone with a high percentage of fast twitch fibers is going to be much more suited to short burst, sprint type activities, and the more percentage that you get of slow twitch fibers the more suited you will be to distance events.

I had always believed and have been taught that the proportions of slowtwitch (Type I) and fast twitch (Type IIa and IIb) were set at birth, much like other body systems, however there have been more recent studies (2004) that are challenging this notion. I've linked one study for reference.

Muscle Fiber Conversion