Aside from the fact that Faris Al-Sultan needs to put some shorts on lol, he has a huge stride.  I find that a higher turnover rate just feels better, but I don't pay attention to this when I'm going fast.

I admire Chrissie Wellington, she's awesome.

Right off the bat, I noticed a disconnect.  He talks about all the elites having significant vertical movement and says that's an absolute necessity when you're running sub 5:00 miles.  However, a minute or so before then, he talked about this elite female competitor running a 2:52 marathon leg in Kona.  Now my math isn't terribly great but a pace calculator tells me that a 2:52 is about a 6:33 pace.  That's sure as hell not crawling along and it's a bunch faster than I can run a marathon but it's a long, long way from a sub 5:00 pace.  Still, it's an interesting analysis.

I'm curious as to how I run.  My guess is that I'm more of a gazelle because my cadence isn't up there higher than 180.  Still, my hypothesis is as it has always been and will continue to be until I see definitive evidence to the contrary.  It is this.

Every human body is different.  With every step, your body makes a thousands decisions and about 998 of those decisions happen unconsciously.  What works for one person is not necessarily right for another because of many, many different factors.  Moreover, what works well for you today may not work well for you tomorrow as you lose weight, build muscle, strengthen your heart, add mitochondria, improve your fat burning ability, etc, etc, etc.  Thus, I continue to advocate what I have always advocated.

Run relaxed, run up right, and let your body figure it out.  It knows better than your conscious mind what is most efficient for you and, as long as you don't get in the way, it will figure it out.

I've been told by someone here that I was a hamster, btw.

LTH and Dub C, somehow, paradoxically...eerily...in agreement.

Keep in mind, this is meant to be taken in the context of a triathlon.  That is IMO the epitome of an endurance event, along with an ultra-marathon.

LTH, do you mean that "elite female competitor" about whom you speak is using vertical movement whilst running 6:33 miles?  Because that certainly doesn't present a contradiction when you make the statement that athletes running sub 5:00 miles use vertical movement.  I may be misunderstanding your point, and if so I apologize for my lack of comprehension (wouldn't be the first time lol).

TOTALLY agree with this though:

Run relaxed, run up right, and let your body figure it out.  It knows better than your conscious mind what is most efficient for you and, as long as you don't get in the way, it will figure it out.

Needing vertical movement as an elite is nothing but BS. Analysis of top elite marathoners shows very little vertical movement, which is wasted energy anyway as it doesn't help move one forward. In one analysis a number of american marathoners were criticized because of their vertical movement and it was suggested that they could drop their times from the 2:15 range to 2:12 or better simply by eliminating most of it.

 

Cadence and stride length may vary with race distance, but I see no difference in form with changes in race distance, even moving from 5K to marathon. IMO changing to a glide or shuffle when moving up to a marathon is asking for trouble, minimally a decrease in performance and possibly overuse injuries.

+1

this guy knows nothing about running technique. There are so many wrong assumptions in this clip, that it is laughable.

Maybe better for a triathlete because it uses different muscles that aren't already tired from swimming/biking?  There is a difference between only running and swimming/biking then running.  I bet swimming and biking techniques used by triathletes differ from swimming and biking techniques used by specialists in those sports also.

I'll bookmark this and come back to it when I need to adjust my technique to get from 3rd place to 1st in the Ironman.  At that point I may also need to adjust my speedskating technique for the River Styx race.