In article <
[email protected]>, David Hallsworth
<
[email protected]> wrote:
>OK - cadence. Optimum = 180 per minute. Cadence is foot strikes, right? And 180 per minute - where
>does that figure come from? Is it something to do with the optimum stride length? Which begs the
>question, if you want to go faster, do you increase your rate of foot strikes, or do you lengthen
>you stride?
Denny has already provided some good answers.
Since I was originally a rather vocal naysayer regarding the 180, and these days am an advocate,
I'll toss in some more observations.
One is to second a point Denny made -- it is not that this is a magical number that must be
adhered to or the running gods will smite you. Taking your easy runs at a cadence _around_ 180 is
beneficial to your running form. Though I didn't believe in 180 when first mentioned, I did
experiment with stride rate. I was then averaging 140-150. Bringing it up to 150-160 immediately
made my knees and hips much happier. Going to 160-170 a year or so later helped me run more
frequently and farther. These days, if I run regularly (which I'm not doing right now) I can count
on right about 180 cadence. As it is, I'm closer to 170 (with attendant comments from my hip and
occasionally the lower back).
The emphasis on quicker strides certainly led me to a better form. Not so much potential for
overstride as I had to work on getting the foot back down _fast_.
As Dot mentioned, and I'll second, keeping a quicker stride rate is a big help for managing hills.
When I race, I try to take hills at even effort, and constant cadence. That means I slow down, but
maintain pretty much the same turnover. People around me often hold pace, and slow down their
turnover (leaping up the hill). Those folks are toasted by the time the course flattens back out
or goes downhill. Some slow down pace as I do, but also back off their cadence (bounding up the
hill again). They, too, don't fare well later on the hill.
Once you've established an efficient stride and stride rate at your slower paces, you speed up by
increasing both stride rate and stride length. Denny has posted some nice research links on this.
I've seen folks, however, who do their slower paces at a 150-ish cadence and then race pace at
180. In this case, there's no natural progression. They just have two totally unrelated running
styles. Their higher speed style is never practiced at all except in the limited speed work. This
winds up meaning that to a large degree, their base miles are wasted. If your base stride is quick
and efficient, then you migrate through your racing stride lengths and rates by simple
progression. Your marathon pace is just a little longer, just a little quicker. 10k is a bit
longer and a bit quicker than that. etc.
regarding the optimal stride rates and whether this is a matter of being elite, or tall, or
whatever. I run in an interesting part of the middle of the total pack, where I'm in the middle of
the pack for my age group, but towards the front of the pack for some of the other age groups.
Obviously we're all running about the same pace or the other people wouldn't be around
me. But one thing I've found is that the folks who are near the front of their age groups have
higher cadence than those (like me) near the middle of their group. Some of the folks in the
middle, like me, keep the quicker cadence. But there are quite a few who are young/strong
enough to be overpowering the stride enough to make up for their 150 (vs my 180) cadence. Get
to the front of the age group, and you have to be efficient (pretty much by definition -- if
you're inefficient, you'd be a lot faster if you were to become efficient; since we're talking
about the front of the pack, there isn't a whole lot faster that's possible). Apparently, the
lowered cadence is not efficient even for the F50 or M70 leaders, even though they run similar
times to the mid-pack 30 and 40-something men.
Height is really irrelevant to the question. I (1.85 meters, 6'1") was jogging along with a quick
cadence, and then realized that I was in synch with a youngster next to me -- 1 meter, 3'4".
Pace is also quite irrelevant. In coaching my beginning/returning runners group, I run with them
at a 170-180 cadence down to 15-ish minutes per mile. I do train a bit faster than that.
>Also, Donovan mentioned 'heavy pounding newbie steps'. I guess I'm a newbie, so I probably pound.
>What should I be doing to avoid this? (I have femoral retroversion leading to flattened arches . I
>have also been told that my heal strike is a little heavy.)
Touch down with your foot squarely under your hip. Increasing your cadence will make this
practically unavoidable. But if cadence is hard for you to fix, focus on the touch down. (Not
'landing', which gives a bad mental image.)
--
Robert Grumbine
http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links.
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much evidence and ease; this
great facility makes them less appreciated than they would be had they been presented in a more
abstruse manner." Two New Sciences
