Strides... (Read 895 times)

Cool, thanks for the info! And Jeff, you need to change your avatar to the WVU logo. They're like UoM's coaching farm club of late.

Come on Leslie, you must harness the pain...EMBRACE the pain. Pain is good...

Less than 60 seconds is optimal. Other than that, you're training different systems.

I'm a big fan of striders probably because I get to feel like I'm incorporating some aspect of speed with the difficulty attendant to intervals or tempo runs. Though to be clear they are very different from those runs and do not work the same systems. To repeat someone else's post, striders should not be painful or even draining. It's my understanding, which almost always comes from Pfitz or Daniels, that striders are meant to engage fast twitch muscle and more generally teach the body to run at a faster speed than we normally train. The primary purpose of striders is not to improve your CV system. With this in mind, I, like other posters, do them exclusively after easy runs. I know some put them in or before the easy run, but I like to approach these after for a few reasons. Physically, I think your muscles should be warmed up before doing them. Psychologically, I like to separate them from the run. If I put them into the middle of an easy run, I fear that it will turn my easy run into something harder than it should be. It takes a lot of concentration for me to run easy runs at the appropriate pace. So, I just find it easier to do striders afterward. The suggestion that you can run these by feel is, in my opinion, very in keeping with the way these should be approached. Take whatever run is most daunting for you (20M long run, extended tempo run, etc.) and put that on one side of the spectrum; the other side should be reserved for striders. These are not hard at all. In fact, I find them really fun. Running fast -- I do the fastest part of the strider at about 90% of all out -- is really different then the rest of my training and is really refreshing. It kind of reminds me of being a kid on a playground.

if you have a garmin, just google your m distance in miles... 100m= .06 miles 200m= .12 miles 400m= .25 miles 600m= .37miles I hit lap to start and finish.

Written by dnice: With this in mind, I, like other posters, do them exclusively after easy runs. I know some put them in or before the easy run, but I like to approach these after for a few reasons. Physically, I think your muscles should be warmed up before doing them. Psychologically, I like to separate them from the run. If I put them into the middle of an easy run, I fear that it will turn my easy run into something harder than it should be. It takes a lot of concentration for me to run easy runs at the appropriate pace. So, I just find it easier to do striders afterward. The suggestion that you can run these by feel is, in my opinion, very in keeping with the way these should be approached. Take whatever run is most daunting for you (20M long run, extended tempo run, etc.) and put that on one side of the spectrum; the other side should be reserved for striders. These are not hard at all. In fact, I find them really fun. Running fast -- I do the fastest part of the strider at about 90% of all out -- is really different then the rest of my training and is really refreshing. It kind of reminds me of being a kid on a playground. Interesting approach (1st paragraph above). I like it. Is there any general rule of thumb as to how long (either in terms of time or distance) that should be considered before tossing in striders? Or is just being "warmed up" the key?