OK, on this morning's run, I finally got around to checking out my cadence. I had often wondered about the idea that running cadence should hold steady, like on a bike, when in fact our bodies don't have anything equivalent to gears (stride length doesn't count, right?, because it's determined by velocity, not a changing ratio of power delivery while cadence holds steady).
At 10mm pace, my cadence was 162. Oh no, not enough turn-over! But then I found that at a faster pace, I think it was close to 8mm, it was more like 180. That made intuitive sense. If I consciously try to push the cadence it has the exact same effect as consciously pushing the pace: I go faster. Presumably at an even faster pace I would have an even faster cadence, eventually approximating the elites, who are often over 200 steps per minute. So on a work (procrastination) break, I Googled 'running cadence' and came across this interesting article:
http://sweatscience.com/the-problem-with-180-strides-per-minute-some-personal-data/
This seems to confirm what I found this morning, but I'm going to experiment more on my next run for further verification.
So is the 180 ideal another one of those half-understood ideas that gets read and passed down without anyone questioning the assumptions behind it? (Apparently the figure originated with Daniels, who worked with elite, not recreational, runners.) Or do you think it has validity? Try running at varying paces and see if your cadence 'naturally' changes.
At 10mm pace, my cadence was 162. Oh no, not enough turn-over! But then I found that at a faster pace, I think it was close to 8mm, it was more like 180. That made intuitive sense. If I consciously try to push the cadence it has the exact same effect as consciously pushing the pace: I go faster. Presumably at an even faster pace I would have an even faster cadence, eventually approximating the elites, who are often over 200 steps per minute. So on a work (procrastination) break, I Googled 'running cadence' and came across this interesting article:
http://sweatscience.com/the-problem-with-180-strides-per-minute-some-personal-data/
This seems to confirm what I found this morning, but I'm going to experiment more on my next run for further verification.
So is the 180 ideal another one of those half-understood ideas that gets read and passed down without anyone questioning the assumptions behind it? (Apparently the figure originated with Daniels, who worked with elite, not recreational, runners.) Or do you think it has validity? Try running at varying paces and see if your cadence 'naturally' changes.