Forums >General Running>Modifying Stride Length (turnover)
http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2010/11/speed-stride-length-x-stride-frequency.html
"One study looked at the stride length and frequency of the top 3 finishers in the 10k at the 2007 world championships. This included Bekele (1st) Sihine (2nd) and Mathathi (3rd). They calculated their individual speed, frequency, and length for every 400m lap of the 25 lap race. The graph below depicts their speed, stride length, and stride frequency:
The first thing you notice is that these three different athletes ran the same speed until the last 2 laps or so. That’s to be expected, but what is interesting is that they had different strategies to do it. Bekele had a low stride frequency with a long stride length for the first 9,000m. On the other hand, Mathathi had a small stride length and a very high frequency to run the same speed. Sihine was somewhere in between these two. What is also interesting is that Mathathi who is 1.67m tall and Sihine who is 1.71m tall both had considerably smaller stride lengths than Bekele who is only 1.60m tall. So, all you shorter runners complaining about how your height keeps you from having a long stride, just look towards Bekele. The point is though that we have three runners all employing different strategies to run the same speed.It gets even more interesting when we look at the last 1km when the pace changed dramatically. For reference they went from hitting around 2:42-2:45 for each km to final km of 2:30, 2:33, and 2:36 respectively, and had last laps of 55.51, 58.66, and 62.16 so the pace picked up considerably. The question is how did these athletes do it?Bekele did it by changing his stride frequency from roughly 190 strides per minute to an astonishing ~216 strides per minute, all while keeping his stride length about the same. So he went from having the lowest stride rate to the highest by far, thus using an increase in stride rate to increase his speed, while maintaining stride length. On the other hand, Sihine showed an interesting pattern. On the 3rd to last lap, he picked up his pace slightly with an increase in stride frequency. But then on the last lap, he increased his speed dramatically with an increase in stride length. The exact opposite approach of Bekele. Lastly, Mathathi, who had the shortest stride length, increased his stride length on the 3rd to last lap to increase his speed. What is really interesting is that on the last two laps, Mathathi’s stride frequency, which was the highest during the race, decreased slightly, while he increased his stride length significantly on the last lap. What this tells me is that he was suffering from the most fatigue and to compensate for the drop in stride rate, he tried to increase his stride length. The net result on the last lap was a maintenance of speed, not the giant increase like in the other two.What does this all mean? Three different runners all had different ways of running at there race speed and then chose different methods of increasing speed when it was time to do. Interestingly, they seemed to increase the one factor that was lowest during most of the race."
More at the link
The process is the goal.
Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call Destiny.
Thanks for all the good advice and information guys.
Cant seem to undo the strike through on the above, but thx again.
Evolving body parts
My limited but very recent experience about changing cadence / sdride length:
I've been having problems with my right achilles for about a month now. Not the first time, should've learnt my lessons, it always starts when I do a bit faster tempo runs (never mind that in absolute terms I'm slow like hell).
I've heard a lot about cadence and 180 (or 90) spm, and I had a gut feeling that my problems are partly because of overstriding and low cadence.
Last week I measured my medium speed cadence at about 164. Pretty low, but not as bad as I expected. I'm trying for higher turnover now, but of course it's not easy / a mixed bag:
1. It feels MUCH easier on my achilles and generally in the foot area. During the runs I have virtually no problem, while walnig up stairs e.g. I still have pain.
2. I can't seem to shorten my stride enough and my pace is automatically higher when I try 170-180 spm. So is my heart rate, so I don't know it's more effective as they say it should be.
3. In general, I feel that my muscles are not working as hard (motion range is smaller?), that's good I guess.
4. I find that conciously increase and maintain a higher cadence is pretty stressful. It's not natural at all. At least in this very early stages of practice.
Oh, and I'm 6'6, so I'm probably doomed in my efforts anyway
I don't know how you track your cadence, but I'll look at my watch for a few seconds and count off 3 strides per second--"1-2-3, 1-2-3"--until I feel like I have the cadence in my head. Then I'll stop looking at my watch and continue to count (helps if you inhale/exhale on the third step, but I'm not usually running hard enough for that, so I'll usually switch it in my head to "1-2-3-4" after a few seconds of not looking at my watch). Over time, I've gotten a feel for the cadence, so it comes more naturally, and it's easier to tell when I'm not hitting it.
This is probably totally overkill, but I do notice that running seems harder when I let my cadence slow, so it's worth for me.