shinypenny said:Was he only going faster than me simply because his stride was longer?
Yes. As Bob G said, there's *only* stride length and frequency, here
in our Newtonian world.
Quoted message said:there are a lot of short, fast runners out there...
True. And short & slow, tall & fast, tall & slow.
Unlike (I presume) walking, stride length in running is not (very? at
all?) dependent on leg length.
The big difference: walking, you've got both feet on the ground
simultaneously, so your leg length limits how far between steps.
Running, you're got both feet airborne, so in a sense you're leaping
about three times a second. Things like effort, strength, weight, and
form will determine how far each leap takes you, but not (directly,
anyway) your leg length.
Somewhat tangential and not aimed at you, jen: though we speak of
stride length, IMO thinking about stride length directly, as a
prescriptive thing, could be detrimental. It's good to consciously
check up on cadence, and goose it in the right direction as called
for. But trying to "take bigger strides" seems like a recipe for
running-form disaster. If one instead simply runs faster at the same
cadence, the stride lengthens to accomplish this.
It may be beneficial to work on *good form* (1) as one means to go
further with each step, but to me that's a different way of framing it
than taking longer strides. But again, anything that makes you run
faster - i.e. any effective training - is improving your stride length
(2). So ultimately, to develop longer strides, do all that training
stuff: run more and farther, run intervals and fartleks and shorter
faster speedwork and tempo runs and races, do weights and cross
training and plyometrics, tequila shots (3), et cetera... and don't
get injured or overtrained in the process!
Quoted message said:For reference, my last 5K was around 33 minutes. I do think lately
I've made some improvements and have gotten faster (doesn't hurt that
I've dropped 5 lbs since that 5K), but it's hard to tell just how much
faster because my ipod thingie isn't calibrated correctly.
It's also hard to tell just how much based on your daily runs, unless
you always race at your training pace.
Miscalibrated ipod thingy, no stopwatch, failure to precisely count
your cadence: I hope you weren't planning to apply for membership in
American OCD Runners any time soon! :-p
(1) and there's of course different schools of thought and techniques
for working on form... some believe about all you might want to do is
work on strength and flexibility, and form will follow; others make a
career out of teaching form
(2) unless it's exclusively improving your cadence - but this is
probably doesn't happen much without one's knowledge and intent
(3) advanced ultra technique
