Having looked at sprinters, our attention now turns to the middle distance runners. Traditionally competing in the 800, 1500 and perhaps the 3,000m; the research hit a problem – World Athletics didn’t report on any of these races at the 2017 World Championships. Fortunately, as I was writing this series of posts, the 2024 European Championships in Rome were taking place and so, I had to be like Jack Daniels, and do my own bit of counting. Using the televised footage I was able to replay certain sequences of the races to get an idea of the cadences involved.
I watched each race through in its entirety to get an understanding of how it played out and identify which runners were near the front of the pack and of whom I could get an unobstructed view. Often the TV director regularly switched between close-ups and long shots of the race, on different runners and by necessity switching to different cameras positioned around the track. Typically I managed to count the paces for 15-20secs and then multiplied that up to get a value per minute. Being manually calculated in this way, I could be out by a few steps per minute but we’re interested in getting a rough idea of the numbers involved – not doing an exact scientific breakdown!
Having identified one runner for each race I then did a lap-by-lap breakdown for them. This was necessary because longer races can start off slowly, building the pace and then finishing in a mad dash to the line. We might expect different cadences as the race pace picks up or lulls. With only one runner analysed per race it’s by no means a perfect look at the cadences we see but it’s an indication.
800m
The men’s final was won by France’s Gabriel Tual in 1:44.87 and it was his data I collected for the two lap race. The first lap took 53sec which is around 3:30/mile and his cadence was 197spm.
The 2nd lap was marginally quicker at 52sec but in the home straight Tual put in a big sprint finish and this was what I measured. I watched and rewatched the video multiple times as my first calculation had him registering a cadence of 234spm, a second viewing it was 224 and I finally settled at 228spm. This is a significantly higher value than the rest of his race but what we expect when runners sprint.
For the women’s 800m, I used Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson as my subject. She’s run the fastest time in the world this year and is in with a chance of winning gold at the Paris Olympics. She actually won the gold at these championships, but I recorded her cadence in the semi-final where she ran 1:58.08.
The first lap of the race was run in 57.6s followed by a slightly slower second lap of 60.4sec. The cadence for the first lap was 202spm, rising to 206spm on the second. This might seem strange given the second lap was slower but from 400-600m the runners slowed before Keely accelerated away on the final bend where I measured her second lap cadence.
What we can see from both the men’s and women’s race is it’s not unusual for 800m runners to have cadences of over 200 during the main race. And with speed being a key requisite for its runners, it’s no surprise to see that a runner like Tual has the ability to hit even higher cadences.
1,500m
Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen is arguably the star of male middle distance track racing at the moment. It was his data (table 1) I captured during the heats of the men’s 1,500m event. Due to the race being a 300m lap followed by three full 400m circuits, it is difficult to know where to place the short ‘lap’ when trying to ascertain split times.
| Cadence (Spm) | Pace (per mile) | |
| Lap 1 | 189 | 3:57 |
| Lap 2 | 186 | 4:09 |
| Lap 3 | 193 | 3:49 |
| Lap 4 | 208 | 3:37 |
Being a heat, it was an easy race for Jakob and he seemingly jogged off the start line such that everyone was ten metres ahead of him. From there he sat at the back of the pack avoiding trouble until the final 300m when he overtook everyone and finished first. We can see his cadence is steady around the 186-194 mark while he was at the back and then when he accelerated it went over 200.
The women’s final where I obtained the cadence data was run even more tactically with the first two laps at a relatively sedate pace before it began to wind up and Ireland’s Ciara Mageean came through to take the gold. Even though the pace was a little slower we see that the cadences were all lower throughout.
| Cadence (SPM) | Pace (per mile) | |
| Lap 1 | 184 | 4:30 |
| Lap 2 | 185 | 4:34 |
| Lap 3 | 180 | 4:13 |
| Lap 4 | 204 | 4:01 |
So that’s cadence for middle distance runners. Bear in mind, the data provided here is limited to four individuals – Gabriel Tual, Keely Hodgkinson, Jakob Ingebritsen and Ciara Mageean. There’s strong reason to believe its representative for all elite runners but there will be some individual variance with others.
If this data shows us anything in particular it’s that the faster you run – the higher your cadence. Intuitively that makes sense. We see the “magic 180” figure is being adhered to at paces around 4:30/mile and when middle distance runners break into a sprint they go over 200spm but never approach the cadence of the short sprints.
In the next post – we will look at the cadence of long distance runners. Most recreational runners only compete in these types of races so it should provide interesting data. Click here to go to it.
Big Red Running 