What are your thoughts on run cadence?
I have read several places that a cadence of 90 footstrikes/min for each foot is optimal (total 180 footstrikes/min). I had tried to measure this with a stopwatch and counting strikes, but was never able to make it a minute without losing count or somehow changing my natural running stride. The best I could say was that I was fairly close.
Now I might be a bit slow on this one, but I have a foot pod for my Garmin that I use indoors. I had no idea that it was automatically recording my cadence. I upload to Training Peaks so I was able to look back over the last month and see that on the treadmill I average a cadence of 78. [I have months and months of data that I never realized existed until this week!] Over the weekend, I wore the foot pod outside to capture my cadence on the road and was avg=80 at Zone 3 pace over 6-miles.
So, what are the thoughts in the Haus on how much "mileage" I can gain from trying to up this cadence toward 90?
As background, I am a former Div III collegiate runner who has PR of 17:09 for 5K, 28:20 for 8K and a 2:59 marathon 22-years ago. After medical school, residency, fatherhood, etc, etc, my most recent 5K is 21:39. I don't know what my cadence was back then. I do know I was 20 pounds lighter (focusing on the body comp challenge for this one.) Somehow I need to access the "inner me" to find something approaching that level of speed again.
So has anyone noticed big improvement gains by upping cadence?
Comments
I was a 80ish cadence runner and heel striker. Bought Evolution RUnning DVD and Pose method DVD in 2005 and got a clip on metronome and my marathon split went from 4:14 to 3:44 in one year! Same training. I now run at 184 cadence (92 each leg) and no heel striking, many fewer injuries and went on to set some lifetime PR's shortly after the switch. NB: it takes at least 6 months to adapt fully IMHO. Take it ez intially. Stretch lots too.
A higher cadence will definately be easier on your body, especially if your a little overweight. I learned a higher cadence when I started running 3 years ago so it was never anything I had to undo. My method was more like chi instead of pose, but it's all good stuff.
As others said, the bigger difference is I went from being injured often to being almost injury free for years since the change....again it's hard to know how much was because of the cadence vs weight loss.
I now run mid to for foot strike in the cadence range or 88 – 96 pace dependant and hill dependant. Much less impact on the knees!
Olympic running coach Bobby McGee and many other running coaches stress this.
Here is a couple of good Bobbie videos.
This one is on cadence
Also good on running in tris
Here is the best site I have found on running Technique http://www.runningtechniquetips.com/
And his ebook is the best $10 I have spent. The book does a great job of explaining the running gait, what muscles SHOULD fire when and how to train them to do it correctly. http://www.runningtechniquebook.com/about-running-technique-book/
Running is basically a series of connected hops from one foot to the other. A faster, shorter stride means less downward force with each footstrike, thus the reduction of injuries. That plus trying to keep your head and upper body level (no bouncing up and down, all the up and down movement is buffered by the legs, like a good mogul skier) is indeed a ticket to free "speed" in an IM marathon. During my current experiment in trying to recover from plantar fasciitis while in the final six weeks of training for IM AZ, I've discovered that a faster cadence (up to 96/minute) is making my runs hurt less both during and afterward, without any loss of speed. I am however only doing LRP for all my runs. We'l see how wll this adds up on race day.
Adding my n= 1 experience with cadence... Kevin, I don't have that kind of run background but I have been running pretty consistently for the last several years, including 10 standalone marathons with times generally in the 3:30s... Not super speedy but decent and consistent (for me). Last fall, at the advice of a friend and local tri coach, I started to incorporate cadence drills into my runs. Nothing crazy, maybe 5-6 x of one minute of focused high cadence/turnover (ie, 90 footstrikes or higher) while warming up. Two things happened... First, during the cadence intervals, my pace would drop by 20-30s per mile. So an easy 8:55 pace automatically became an easy 8:30ish pace, without trying to run faster. Like! I also noticed I naturally started to land more on my forefoot... I guess the high cadence sort of forced a more efficient stride. Also like! It definitely took some focus to get used to that cadence, and I used the offseason (I wasn't part of EN, so no out season!) and treadmill to build longer high cadence intervals into my runs. I think it ultimately helped my running a great deal. I have yet to do a standalone marathon to see what this might translate to, but I do know my runs this past summer were stronger than in many previous years, and I ran well at both half and full IM distance this summer. It really helped to be able to focus on maintaining a quick efficient turnover and I'm really happy that I took the time to work on it! Good luck!
I hopped on my treadmill yesterday for an easy 3-miler (sort of continuing the 30-runs in 30-days challenge) to try to increase my run frequency. I concentrated on trying to up the cadence and averaged 83/min vs my usual of 78/min. Its amazing how much difference 5-foot strikes makes. Really felt like I was hamstering it (like the small animal that runs on a wheel). Had to watch the Garmin or cadence would start to drift back down to my "natural" state. Going to continue to try to lift the cadence over time and see what happens. So far feel fine today, but it was a pretty easy run yesterday so I don't think I would feel much different if I had done it normally.
A little late to the thread but my 2 cents - i love a higher cadence - everything feels better, probably cause form is better - tend to be more upright. I'm usually around 86-88 and get to 90-92 when going hard. On longer runs I notice that cadence drops as I get tired which is probably just making things worse sense form is being compromised. My guess is that no matter what speed you are moving - cadence ideally should be relatively constant. Another thing to be aware of his whether your cadence is dropping or increasing on declines and inclines. I would surmise that getting the cadence relatively constant no matter the terrain is a good goal. I'd like to get my cadence to stick at 92 this year....will try to measure it more often.
Yes, foot pod goes a long way. Also, doing a search in iTunes for 180bpm yields some pretty good running podcasts, where you can ingrain the tempo in your head without having to think about it.
podrunner and another that I can't thin of the name I use all the time. It really helps to have the beat to run to although the music can get a bit old.
Yes to everything. I might be talking out my ass, but I suspect that when it comes to run efficiency, cadence is where the money is at, for the reason that it seems to rely less on muscular forces - a large contraction to 'bound' forward ... another large contraction to 'bound' forward, and so on - than some of the mechanical forces that Al describes (and that underpin Pose, Chi and McGee) to move the athlete forward and are exploited by a faster turnover.
IOW, mo' muscle use = higher HR, decreased efficiency, and so on. mo' mechanical forces = improved efficiency, lower HR and so on.
Early versions of the OS plans used to prescribe the easy runs to "concentrate on form and high cadence." Do This, and you get a two-fer from these lesser-quality, non-breakthrough sessions that pays forward to the harder stuff.
And maybe 'Mechanical forces" isn't the correct term, but you know what I'm getting at.
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Edit: I've noted my last three or four posts have had some element of "back in the early days of EN ..." or "when the OS program first began in Crucible..." or "back in the 60s, when Janis came on stage on day 3 of Woodstock ..."
OMG I HAVE BECOME THE EN RETROGROUCH. Time to load up my VCR with tapes of Tinley/Allen/Scott and the Pontuis twins and crack open a Bud Light.
Further proof: thinking of buying a steel road frame.
i only read your post, not the responses due to time constraints, so i apologize if this is repeated, but higher cadence will place less load on your joints and so you will be able to run longer over time with less damage especially on concrete. considering your past speed, you likely were running much lower cadence back then, so you will have to readjust somewhat.
good luck.
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Regardless, my starting cadences were 76 for long runs, 82 for faster efforts, and over time I have raised them to 85 for long runs, 90 - 95 for faster runs. It's hard to say how much of an impact this one change had, since it came at the same time as the other changes I made. My n=1 is that my speed did not increase or decrease from this change, the only difference has been in not getting any running injuries (I'm not complaining!)
I started scurrying (this high cadence stuff feels like I am scurrying, rather than running) at a warm-up pace. Concentrated on keeping feet turning over quickly. Garmin showed cadence basically around 88. Interestingly, I set up the 310XT with the cadence and pace on different screens. Since I was looking at cadence, I couldn't see my pace. I didn't feel like I was going very hard by RPE though. I was pretty shocked when the Garmin beeped to tell me I had done my warm-up mile in 7:07. Realizing I was going too fast, I tried to move the feet quickly, but not go so fast forward. Second mile beeped in 7:17. Pretty pumped about this, but not wanting to really bugger up things, I tried my level best to slow down to something resembling e-pace while keeping cadence high. The next two miles passed in 7:37. The last mile went in something like 7:23. I ended up with 5-miles straight in 37:09 with avg HR of 151, avg cadence=86. I would say my RPE and HR would show that I was somewhere in Zone 2-3. I felt like I could have easily carried this speed for twice the distance. It is tough to get overly excited after 3 workouts, but I am very interested in where this will lead.
Just echoing what everyone else has said. In my experience, as cadence increases:
When I first started running I was in the low 80's and plagued with all sorts of issues. Over the course of about 3 months in 2000 I move that natural cadence up into the low 90's where it is now and I've been much less prone to overuse issues, though I continue to work through stuff caused by a very loose ankle, flat, flat feet, etc.
Started running in '02, first marathon in '04 - finished 18 so far. The last 4 have been my fastest with a PB of 3:31.
When running at my go-to, all day pace my cadence is 84-86 consistantly. Usually slows significantly iif I get really fatigued like on a long hot run.
Doing harder intensities like in the OS or a half marathon, my pace is typically 90-94. It does take a bit of effort if I concentrate only on cadence. But if I focus on form it increases the rpm automaticly.
My mental cues are: shoulders back and rotate the pelvis forward. This gets my forward tilt without leaning forward and keeps my footstrike below me. It seems very hard to be in this position and have a slow cadence. Longer intervals where I start to fatigue, I loose the form then cant hold the cadence. My resulting pace is much slower.