Run-Down Forums

[Micah Ward]

It was Daniels where I read about the 180 stride count.
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[madscout]

So I in my most previous runs I ran the following stride rates:

167 (slow running speed)
166 (slow running speed)
172 (shorter faster run)

In addition to trying to increase stride rate, I also adjusted my stride slightly so that I was landing on the balls of my feet (as apposed to heel striking first). All I have to say is that my calves are torn to shreds right now! I'm not worried about it though. They should be able to adapt in a couple weeks. I'm pretty convinced this is the way to go since all the elite athletes are up on the balls of their feet grinding out 180+ steps a minute (at marathon distances even.) Don't you think?

Micah, thanks for the welcome to the boards. I wouldn't necessarily say that the stride rate increase feels uncomfortable... different yes. I feel like right now I have to work a bit harder to get out a higher stride rate and I chalk that up to the fact that it is a new skill. I think that in the long run if I can make 180 steps/min feel natural I will have a higher potential.

[Dan]

[Micah Ward]

There may be something to this stride rate experiment we have going here. I counted yesterday and was running 166 strides per minute. That was during a 3 mile run at 9:24 pace.

Madscout, what pace do you hit when running 166?
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[madscout]

Micah,

My stride rate / running pace on my three runs was as follows:

167 / 9:33 pace (three mile run)
166 / 9:13 pace (three mile run)
172 / 7:22 pace (two mile run)

As you can see there is not an excellent correlation of pace to stride rate. I believe this is because I'm experimenting with the higher stride rates, none of which are natural to me yet. Once a higher stride rate gets ingrained into my muscle memory, I would expect (from my previous experience) the chart to look like this:

180 / 9:33 pace (three mile run)
180 / 9:13 pace (three mile run)
180 / 7:22 pace (two mile run)

[Micah Ward]

I may be missing something in my thought process but I believe you will get faster when you get the 180 ingrained in the muscle memory. It seems that if you run a certain pace at the 166 rate then you will run a faster pace with an increased rate. Now that is assuming that stride length stays the same. If you increase to 180 but shorten your stride then pace may stay the same but it seems to me that the same stride length repeated at a faster rate equals a faster pace.

Does that make sense?
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[Guest]

[Micah Ward]

Camelback with beer?
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[madscout]

YES!

[Micah Ward]

I did 10.5 this morning in 1:56:00 and checked my cadence 4 times at various points. They were 167, 164, 164 and 168. I was walking 2 minutes out of every 20 so my actual running pace was just a little over 10:00 per mile. I'm not sure if that signifies anything but there it is.
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[AM_Runner]

yeah and I am in the 160 -164 range consistantly - however with the marathon coming up in 6 weeks I am not changing a thing now - perhaps that will something i will look into after Nov 7

training is going along fairly well right now so don't want to mess with it too much

[Micah Ward]

You are right. This is too close to race day to be experimenting with anything.
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[AM_Runner]

I spoke to a guy who has been out training people for a while - Trained with Kenyans (has some pretty amazing PR's as well (2:16 or 2:18 marathon) about Stride Rate - and he thought that messing around with it ever is not a very good idea - Exact words were your body adapts to the right rate for you.. trying to mess with it causes your body to have a decreased abilty to perform optimally (including even things like Oxygen uptake) He also said drills and such will modify this to some extent but forcing yourself to run at a specific cadence is not the best idea.. Additionally he said the reason you see some literature on the rates of strides is that people want to read something else and there is only so much you can write about...

Just thought maybe it would be helpful to hear another side to this story if anyone is interested.

[Dan]

[AM_Runner]

Not really sure what you are getting at there Dan...

#1 why would changing these things one way or the other necessarily mean that you would not improve? Who is to say that changing one way cause more improvement than another.