Category: Training

Back at the gym

I’m back at the gym for the first time in over fifteen years. The last time I did any serious weight lifting was in the 2007-2009 period and I’m not sure I did much towards the end of that because I discovered yoga. When I left the gym, the yoga ended and my main activities became golf and running. Apart from a couple of circuit training classes in the following year, I haven’t done any organised fitness classes since.

That said, over the years I’ve built up an array of small home gym equipment. When I was sixteen I bought a pair of dumbbells which could hold up to 10kg each. Being a teenager, full of wishful thinking, I had visions of getting muscular and strong whereas reality shows I barely used them. When we moved house a few years later my dad put them away in the loft and they didn’t reappear until about a decade ago when he found them in a clearout! He sent them to me and once again they sat in a corner unused until, I decided that while running would keep my lower half strong, I needed to do something to ensure I didn’t get too skinny up top with all the miles I was doing. I was fairly conscientous for a few months until for one reason or another I stopped.

When the pandemic struck I next became interested in them and have been consistently training since then – the dumbbells, some press-ups and corework. The few extra items of home gym are a 15kg dumbbell, a couple of weighted vests – 5kg and 6-10kg adjustable, a skipping rope, a 5kg medicine slam ball and some push up bars. In the backgarden there’s a pile of 12 patio slabs which I used for doing some legwork variations like step-ups and touchdown squats.

With these past 3-4 years being the first time I’ve trained consistently at home – I’ve gradually got stronger and fitter. My general system has been to do a small amount of exercise that only takes a few minutes and therefore isn’t foreboding. Doing three sets of press-ups each lasting fifteen seconds with a minute’s recovery can be done in the time spent waiting for the kettle to boil and make the cup of tea. And it doesn’t feel too tiring either.

I also only trained twice per week – I didn’t want it to become onerous. I didn’t want to have to train with aches or soreness like I do when I run every day.  I wanted to feel fresh and ready for each session. Importantly I didn’t have any major goals when I began other than to add on to the existing fitness I already had.

For me, keeping a log or spreadsheet of what I’d done is very motivating. Seeing the weeks of training become months of training gives me a sense of pride and fulfilment. I like flicking between where I started and where I’ve reached and seeing how the gradual improvement is turning into something bigger. Seeing all those weeks filled in and ticked off.

When I started it was all meant to be achievable within a few minutes.  Yet as I got stronger it began to feel fine to train for longer. Sometimes I would begin to feel stale with the training so I would add extra reps or time of duration to my exercises. I would add sets or reduce the recovery time or whatever. Initially that change would make things feel harder and then as the body adapts begin to become my new normal.

Occasionally I would feel it was time for an overhaul and to make more drastic changes. At one stage, I was doing an hour’s worth of corework twice per week. That’s not the “while the kettle boils” I set out with but shows how enthusiasm and willingness grow as an exercise regime beds in. Doing that hour was good but I decided I needed to get it back down to manageable and revamped so I was back down at twenty minutes but with more challenging sets and reps.

A few times I introduced new exercises. Some of them lasted, others didn’t. But the main idea of working out twice per week has remained.

As this year has gone by I found I was beginning to run out of ways to challenge myself with my home gym. Doing more reps is more time consuming and simply allows you to do more reps at a particular weight. If you want to get bigger (i.e. bodybuilding) then more reps is how you do that. But as a runner, I’m not interested in adding muscle mass.

What I really wanted to do was get stronger especially in the lower body which you can do by lifting heavier weights but with few reps. This meant I had a choice to make. Either buy more weights so I could train heavier to get stronger or join a gym. I decided on the latter because I don’t want my home cluttered up with loads of weights that I only use for a small part of the week.

I’ve joined my local gym on a six month membership which will take me through the winter and then allow me to get back outdoors running for the summer.  When I started at the beginning of October I was tentative. I’ve never done deadlifts, which are considered a great exercise for runners, and fifteen years ago I was squatting about 130kg which is about 1.5 times my body weight of 85kg. All these years later I wasn’t sure what I’d be capable of lifting, so in my first week I was squatting only 50kg which is closer to half my body weight. I didn’t want to do too much in the first week and feel sore for days so that was another reason to start carefully. Of course the most important reason was I didn’t want to overdo squats or deadlifts, use poor form, get injured or rip up my back. When I was squatting heavy all those years ago, I was doing it in a Smith machine which helps with control, now I’m doing it freestanding.

I’ve been pleased with my progress. After the first couple of weeks of taking it steady and reaching 70kg squat I then began to increase each week. Seven weeks on, I could manage to squat 115kg albeit I recognise I’m not going deep enough. This week I’ve dropped the weight back down to 100kg and working on improving that depth.

In joining the gym, I said I wasn’t going to set targets but I’m inevitably haunted by the ghosts of the past. When I was 18-19 I weight trained with a friend three times per week but everything was 3 sets of 10 reps and when I could do 12 reps then to move up to the heavier weight. I used the same approach fifteen years. Knowing what I know now, I hope I may be able to get better results than ever before. Now I’m doing only two days per week to aid recovery while still wanting to fit in running on other days. I’m focusing on lifting heavier with lower rep counts but occasionally doing lower weights to build support for the heavier weights. I’m keeping a log of my progress to help motivate and be sure of what I did last time.

Somewhere at the back of my mind I’m thinking if I can add 10kg per month to my squats and deadlifts then by the end of my membership as April rolls around I’ll be stronger than I’ve ever been before. When I took up running seriously in 2010-11 I was still very strong legged from the previous weights I’d done. I’ve no doubt I lost much of that over the past decade with too much distance running and rarely challenging my top-end speed. That’s not to say I haven’t done blocks of hill training in these years which can be as effective as the weights room but it’s been fun going back to the free weights and having my strength quantified.

Is it oxygen debt?

On Mondays, I run a couple of laps of my road all-out. I live on a crescent to which its two ends join back to a connecting road which makes for a nice loop. I begin with a couple of laps from my house to warm-up and in truth it’s not a particularly good one as I often go too fast and it only lasts about four minutes. After this I walk to the far end of my road where I’ll be starting from. This takes 3-4 minutes and gives just enough time for any excess from the warm-up to be gone.

Arriving at the corner I reset my watch then take a look around to check for traffic as I’m intending to run in the road. It’s quietly residential with only the occasional car or delivery van every five minutes or so. I compose myself one final time and then hit the Start button. I’m focusing on a good push off with high cadence and small steps. As the weeks have gone by cadence has been rising. Last week it reached 214-218 in the early going; whereas less than two months ago I could barely hit the 190s. Depending on fatigue it might drop back for a week but the general trend has been one of increase. Somewhere in the dim and distant past I could hit the 220s so I’m hoping I will get back there and then go beyond with dedicated focus and training.

From the corner there is a nice straight taking under thirty seconds to reach a corner where I instinctively slow because it’s almost 90 degrees. Even though I’m running on the road and can take it wide there is always an element of slowing as the initial burst of energy is gone, there’s a very slight uphill and it’s a change of direction. Sometimes there’s also a headwind to make things even tougher. If there’s ever a tailwind I’ve never felt it helping out.

Around the corner and I’m trying to accelerate again. This is helped by a downward stretch and from here onwards it will be the curve of the crescent back to where I began, no more corners to negotiate. I pass my house at about the halfway mark and then it’s fairly flat. As I reach the 45-50s mark I begin to feel what 400m runners always feel as the arms and legs are getting heavy from lactic build up and the coordination is going. Of course, I’m also breathing hard and all my body’s signals are telling me to slow down. There’s often a moment around here where I’m beginning to wish I’d never started and I have to tell myself to “hang on”, “it’s not much further” and “I can’t let myself down now”. Self-coaching at its finest.

My GPS always shows this stretch as the fastest part of the lap after the initial start. As the clock ticks past a minute, the road begins to grade upwards and I’m vigilant for any oncoming traffic as my sight around the bend is hidden by walls and hedges. Drivers often come into the road quicker than they should for a residential road.  My ears are listening out too. I’m ready to jump on the pavement if needs must.

The final metres are a short upsection. I have to engage more muscle to finish this. It comes right at the time where my body is begging me to slow. My mind urges me to keep going, no quitting with the end so close. Crossing my imaginary finish line / starting point, I click the Lap button and then begin to walk. It’s already been tough to this point yet in some ways worse is to come.

On finishing my legs are aching a little, my shoulders too sometimes and most notably my breathing is fast and short. In the early season I can usually stay jogging after an effort but, as the weeks go by and fitness improves, I start having to walk. On shorter sprints it becomes a standing recovery.

The peculiar thing is while I’m breathing very hard at the end of the run, about ten seconds after finishing it gets worse. In those first ten seconds, I’ve counted my breathing to be at about 60-65 breaths per minute; but then at the ten second mark it goes haywire. I begin to find myself gulping for air, unable to get it in quick enough. I’ve counted my breathing rate rising to the equivaent of around 150 breaths per minute and this lasts up to about the thirty second mark. It then begins to slow and has normalised by about a minute yet even then I’ll still be panting for the next few minutes.

You’d assume this breathing difficulty is down to lack of oxygen. It’s not. My heart-rate monitor tells me my heart-rate is in the 150s. This is not my max. At a recent parkrun, while running a 23 minute parkrun (i.e. paces slower than 7min/mile) I saw my heart-rate creep up into the 160s and peak at 172 despite not putting in a sprint finish. It’s clear if my heart wanted to circulate more oxygen it could, but it doesn’t. I can only surmise that it’s because sprints are highly anaerobic and therefore the body is trying to reset all the by-products which have built up. Its trying to expel carbon dioxide from the lungs, not supply more oxygen to the muscles.

With my first effort completed I now do a walking recovery. As I wrote, the first minute sees me breathing very hard and my legs hardly have the energy to move. Things begin to ease and by about  three mins I’m beginning to get back to normal. I’m still breathing a little harder though.

When the walking lap has been completed (taking over five minutes) it can be tough convincing myself I’ve recovered enough to run another effort fast. The anaerobic energy system half refills in thirty seconds, fully refills in three minutes. The problem is it takes the body significantly longer to clear out all the waste products from these high intensity efforts. Sprinters typically budget a minute’s recovery for every ten metres run. If they run 200m, that means twenty minutes of standing around. Few distance runners will do all-out sprints or hang around that long; particularly in winter.

What I find on the second effort is that once again the first thirty seconds are fine then it begins to bite. And it bites even worse at the halfway point and the legs get heavier and the co-ordination goes. It’s notable when I look at the post run data that I’m able to start the second effort quicker and this in turn builds the lactate up quicker. By the end of the second effort, I feel worse than I did the first. The saving grace is I can just walk home. The knowledge that there is no more to do is wonderful. It’s why I make the session short because it allows me to go hard for two efforts giving them both my best effort.

The ‘oxygen debt’ is tough after this second effort and even when I arrive home five minutes later I can still be panting. I can go upstairs to change and I will still be sweating. On some occasions when I’ve either hit new territory in the session or when my legs are really fresh, I’ve found myself still feeling the effects half an hour after I began. And I definitely sleep well that night!

The Truth About Cadence Part 5

The previous parts of this series can be accessed by clicking on the following links where they will open in new windows. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

I wrote this series of posts because there is an idea out there that 180 steps per minute is the perfect number to run at and I want to investigate. Only this past weekend, I came across an interview with Chris McDougall, author of Born to Run, where he stated “For perfect running form you should be running at 90 strides per minute”  therefore 180 steps.

The idea that there’s a perfect onesize fits all cadence for people of different heights, weights, speeds and abilities has always seemed wrong to me. Maybe it’s because I’m tall and, when I started running I counted my cadence at 150 steps per minute on easy runs rising to mid-150s when I picked up the pace but hardly ever going over 160 in a race. I always assumed it would increase as I got faster, after all I was rarely running any quicker than 7min/mile. On reflection these lower numbers are partly because my form was poor and I was overstriding yet even today with improved technique I’m still running easy runs in the mid-160s. It might reach 180 at 6min/mile and when I pick up my pace to 5min/mile I start to hit the 190s. When I sprint it rises above 200spm. This is the progression we glimpsed for some of the elites.

To recap, the trend for elite cadence data is that very high cadences are only seen over short distances. As the race distance gets longer, cadence drops until for the majority of runners it reaches 180. That gels with the ‘180-rule’ idea and the drop-off makes sense because the shorter races are run at lower speeds and we know speed is created through a combination of steps and stride length. Sprinters have both high cadences and very long strides – neither of which is sustainable for a distance runner. It is only at the end of a distance race where we see endurance athletes raise their cadence and/or stride length to sprint for the line.

Typically we see the 100m sprinters have cadences in the 280-300 range, 400m runners are 220-260, the middle distance runners at 190-210 and long distance is in the 180-190 range.

It’s very clear that if you want to be a sprinter or middle distance runner it’s going to involve high cadences – well over 200spm. Since writing the post on sprinters, I’ve been reading a book on sprint mechanics which began its research in the the early 1980s and now leads to the fastest sprinters training to create high cadences. But its author is very clear to point out this must not occur at the expense of stride length. An adequate stride length is still required. It points out that when some sprinters have pushed their cadence too high (over 300spm) this has been detrimental to their speed.

Whether or not this increase of cadence, which has worked for sprinters, can validly be transferred to long distance running is debateable. For one thing, if it were transferrable then we might expect to already be seeing numerous elite distance runners with cadences well over 200. Whereas the data I covered found only one long distance runner operating at over 200spm. A reason for this may be because sprinters achieve quicker cadence through use of the hip flexors, a relatively weak muscle group, and therefore distance runners would struggle to maintain high cadences for long periods. Even in the 400m we see the cadence of elite sprinters fatiguing and this is in a race lasting 45-50 seconds.

With most recreational runners being interested in races between 5K and marathon in length, the long distance data is most relevant. Thirty-two runners were detailed – eight men and women in their respective 10,000m and marathon races – and we see a different picture to the one presented by Jack Daniels in his book.

At the 1984 Olympics Daniels recorded only one runner having a cadence below 180, out of the fifty he surveyed. His method was very basic and done with the naked eye but, he has also conducted proper scientific research so while observing from the seats is not perfect; his findings are still worthwhile. Ultimately what’s been important throughout these posts has been to get a rough idea of what runners are doing, not coming up with a perfect number.

By contrast the data used in this series of posts, which is taken from the World Athletics reports, has a high standard of scientific rigour to it. High speed digital cameras filming an area which has been carefully measured and calibrated then using computers to analyse the film. This data showed nine of the distance runners (about 25%) had cadences below 180.

For me, the most interesting of these is seeing Mo Farah’s cadence at 173-178 while running at 4:15-30/mile. He is not just a run of the mill athlete, he won multiple Olympic and World titles, which highlights that while 180 may be something to aim for, it is not a prerequisite for success. While his best time in the marathon (2hr05) is not close to the best of the best; he won the 2018 Chicago marathon which is one of the majors.

Recreational paces

What we aren’t seeing from any of this data is what the elites are doing at typical recreational paces which are often 8min/mile or slower. In the marathon, we have data from the men at both the 30 and 40km marks and we see their cadence dropping as they slowed towards 6min/mile. That would suggest that if they run at even slower paces their cadence will drop further. Perhaps.

The marathon data also has three runners who are slower than 6min/mile which is a pace many decent club runners can achieve. The cadences are 175, 185, 186spm – so there is nothing conclusive there.

Rereading a later edition of Daniels’ Running Formula book he mentions that he treadmilled an Olympic marathon gold medallist for their cadence. At 7min/mile it was 184, at 6min/mile 186 and at 5min/mile had reached 190. This is very much in line with what we see in how the cadences drop off in the men’s marathon data reviewed. Yet it is also very different to what Mo Farah is doing in the 10,000m where he is running significantly faster than with lower cadences.

One reason often given for creating a high cadence is to avoid injury. There is some logic, particularly for marathoners, where a higher cadence means a short stride and less vertical displacement i.e. they don’t go as high in the air and therefore don’t hit the ground with as much force. Their effort is used to go more horizontally.  A good example of this is Tirunesh Dibaba in the 10,000m race; where she has a high cadence especially when sprinting in the home straight (228spm) and she must be barely leaving the ground with each step. Some years before this race she had moved up to the marathon and so the lower impact is seen as beneficial when you’re running well over one hundred miles per week.

Final thoughts

Most recreational runners are interested in the distance races – anything from 5K to marathon and maybe beyond. When they go out on easy runs they are doing paces of 8min/mile or slower; some of the decent club runners are closer to 7min/mile.

We have no specific detail on what the elites do at these paces but if your cadence is already in the 180-190 range – when you run faster you will need to increase your stride length to get significantly quicker. It may be possible to increase your cadence towards 200 but the data suggests it won’t go much higher. To improve stride length you are going to have to work on strength and speed making sure you are getting full hip extension.

If your cadence is below 160 at slower paces, it may not be an issue particularly if you are tall or muscular but it may be something to consider looking at.  Often the advice about 180 cadence is intended to stop runners from overstriding which can lead to injuries. Certainly if you have recurring injuries then it may be worth looking at video of yourself running in conjunction with considering whether to increase cadence.

Ultimately though, the cadence data is there to support your running; not be an end goal. Every step you take on a run is a combination of stride length which involves ground contact time, air time, vertical displacement among other things. All these variables interact. Changing one will affect others.

Elite runners run how they feel comfortable. Sometimes it is a high cadence, sometimes it is a low one. Some like Mo Farah have a long stride with low cadence, others like Tirunesh Dibaba are getting their feet to contact the ground as often as possible.

If you enjoyed these articles why not take a look at the ones I wrote about Stride Length – part 1 and part 2.

The Truth About Cadence Part 4

In the Introduction I detailed how, in his Running Formula book, Jack Daniels states that his survey of runners at the 1984 LA Olympics found everyone in events over 3000m had a cadence of 180 or greater – with one exception.

In this post, I’m looking at the 10000m and marathon races from the 2017 World Championships and finding more anomalies than Jack discovered. To read about the cadences of Sprinters and Middle-Distance runners – click the links.

Men’s 10,000m

The race was won by Great Britain’s Mo Farah in 26:49.51s with Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegui and Kenya’s Paul Tanui finishing less than a second behind him. Twenty-two runners had started the 25-lap race and while the early going was slow the race eventually settled down to running laps at around 4:15-30/mile pace. Gradually runners were dropped from the lead pack and at the bell Farah was leading a group of six;  it was here that he kicked and covered the final lap in under 56 seconds.

The technical report on the race covers the first eight finishers and provides their data in the home straight on the 15th lap. We are given the Step Rate when the race has settled down and the runners are running at around 4:30/mile.

Step Rate (Hz)Cadence (SPM)
Farah2.89173
Cheptegui3.04182
Tanui3.07184
Muchiri3.44206
Yimer3.23194
Kamworor3.09185
Hadis3.07184
Ahmed2.85171
Average3.09185
Table 1 – Step Rate (Hz) and Cadence (SPM) data for top 8 finishers in Men’s 10,000m

I’ve done the conversion from Step Rate to cadence and we can see there is a huge range from 171 up to 206spm. Mo Farah is just a couple of steps higher at 173 than Canada’s Mohammed Ahmed (171). It’s clear a sub-180 cadence was no hindrance to Farah because he won the gold and Ahmed finished 8th in 27min02 only fifteen seconds behind.

Many of the athletes are running at Jack Daniels’ predicted 180 cadence with Kenya’s Jemal Yimer (194) and Ethiopia’s Bedan Muchiri (206) being the notable exceptions. While the focus of these posts has been to ignore stride length; I think it is useful to recognise Muchiri’s is 1.75m here.

The technical report also provides greater detail (table 2) for the three medallists with their cadence from five points in the race including the home straight as they battle for gold at top speed.

Lap 5Lap 10Lap 15Lap 20Lap 25 Lap 5Lap 10Lap 15Lap 20Lap 25
Farah2.933.092.892.973.33 176185173178200
Cheptegui3.013.043.043.053.45 181182182183207
Tanui3.103.153.073.123.45 186189184187207
Table 2 – Step Rate (Hz) and Cadence (SPM) data for Men’s 10,000m medallists

What we see is that, for much of the race, Mo Farah is operating at sub-180 cadence while Cheptegui and Tanui are operating at 180-190. It’s when they reach the final lap of the race that they put the afterburners on and here we see all three runners increase their cadence. Mo Farah continues to have the lowest of the three albeit he is achieving a cadence of 200 at this point.

Women’s 10,000m

The women’s race was run differently to the men’s 10000m. While initially both races began slowly with a pack of runners bunched together; it was about twelve minutes into the women’s race on the 9th lap that eventual winner Almaz Ayana took charge.

While the 8th lap had been completed in 1:15 (5min/mile) she now moved to the front and upped the pace with the next two laps coming in 1:08 and 1:07 (4:35-40/mile). Gradually she pulled away from the the rest of the field, lapping back markers and went on to win gold finishing almost a minute ahead of the other medallists. There was a tussle between Tirunesh Dibaba (silver) and Agnes Tirop (bronze) over the last lap with Alice Nanowuna following in fifty metres behind them.

The cadence data (table 3) is a little more conventional for the women with all the runners between 180-192 yet there is one exception – Kenya’s Alice Nawowuna who is down at 173. The race commentators mention Nawowuna is the tallest of the three Kenyans which could explain a longer stride.

Step Rate (Hz)Cadence (SPM)
Ayana3.14188
Dibaba3.17190
Tirop3.20192
Nawowuna2.88173
Krumins3.07184
Infeld3.02181
Cheptai3.07184
Huddle3.17190
Average3.09185
Table 3 – Step Rate (Hz) and Cadence (SPM) data for top 8 finishers in Women’s 10,000m

As with the men’s data, the sample is from midrace approaching 6000m where they are running at about 4:50-55/mile with the exception of leader Ayana who is at 4:35 and Molly Huddle at 5:03.

Below in table 4 we see the race breakdown for the medallists and cadence increases in the final lap on the home straight. Ayana is unchallenged so never has to hit her highest gear. The battle between Dibaba and Tirop is close and we can see their cadences are very different. At this stage of her career, Dibaba had been running marathons for three years and it is notable how smooth her stride is sprinting against Tirop. At 228, Dibaba’s turnover in this finishing straight is as good as, or better, than many middle distance runners while throughout the rest of the race she is above average by hitting the low 190s.

Lap 5Lap 10Lap 15Lap 20Lap 25 Lap 5Lap 10Lap 15Lap 20Lap 25
Ayana3.063.033.143.033.23 184182188182194
Dibaba3.093.193.173.233.80 185191190194228
Tirop3.083.093.203.033.26 185185192182196
Table 4 – Step Rate (Hz) and Cadence (SPM) data for Women’s 10,000m medallists

Marathon

The 2017 World Championship marathons were held on a four lap street circuit around London with each lap measuring about 10km.  While there were some long straights on the course, it also had a number of corners to be negotiated which either required runners to run wider or adapt their pace. It was a true head-to-head race in the sense of trying to beat other runners rather than going for a time.

The marathon data is possibly the most interesting data in this whole study because we have two sets of data for the men recorded at around 30km and 40km and, with runners tiring in both men’s and women’s races, we get a glimpse of them running at paces we might expect from above average recreational runners.

The men’s race was won by Geoffrey Kirui of Ethiopia in 2:08:27. Table 5 shows his cadence on lap 3 is 191spm where he is recorded running at 4:50/mile. Having taken the lead at 35km and opened up a lead over silver medallist Tamirat Tola, he had slowed by the 40km mark. By this point he was running at 5:25/mile and his cadence had dropped to 186spm.

  Lap3   Lap4 
Step Rate (Hz)Cadence (SPM) Pace (per mile) Step Rate (Hz)Cadence (SPM) Pace (per mile)
Kirui3.191914:50 3.101865:25
Tola3.051834:58 3.001805:51
Simbu2.911755:22 2.891735:27
Hawkins3.121875:21 3.231945:11
Kipketer2.851715:29 2.861715:42
Meucci3.141865:29 ———
Ghebregergis2.961785:37 2.991795:49
Wanjiru3.201925:26 3.081856:10
Average3.051835:19 3.021815:39
Table 5 – Men’s marathon data at roughly 30 and 40km

Of the other six runners who data was recorded for, only Callum Hawkins increased his pace in the last 10km – this was consistent with him moving up in the race from 8th place to finish 4th. To run 10secs/mile quicker his cadence increased from 187 to 194.

Meanwhile Tola, who slowed by almost a minute per mile, dropped his cadence from 183 to 180; similarly Wanjiru who slowed to over 6mins/mile had his cadence drop from 192 to 185.  The other three runners see a small drop in pace – Simbu slows by 5secs/mile – a relatively low cadence of 175 drops further to 173; Kipketer’s cadence remains the same as he slows by 13secs/mile and the one anomaly is Ghebregergis who fractionally increases Step Rate while slowing by 12secs/mile. I’d be inclined to see this as remaining the same with the 0.01Hz change attributable to the normal variations which occur while running.

The women’s marathon was won by Rose Chelimo in 2:27:11 – not a particularly fast time by modern standards – equating to an average pace of 5:37/mile (35min per 10K). But it was closely contested with the top four runners finishing within ten seconds of each other.

Unlike the men’s race, there is only data provided from the 4th lap – the 40km mark – and at this late stage of the race we see in table 6 a variety of paces from the 5:28/mile of USA’s Amy Cragg who is almost a minute per mile quicker than Kirwa and Dibaba at 6:17 (barely quicker then a 20min 5K parkrun).

  Lap4 
Step Rate (Hz)Cadence  (SPM)Pace (per mile)
Chelimo3.311995:41
Kiplagat3.071845:41
Cragg3.291975:28
Daniel3.091855:37
Demise2.951775:56
Kirwa3.101866:17
Kiprop2.751655:58
Dibaba2.921756:17
Average3.061845:51
Table 6 – Women’s marathon data at roughly 40km

We see a significant range of cadences despite all eight finishers running 2hr27-28. Gold and bronze medallists, Chelimo and Cragg are hitting the 190s with Kiplagat, Daniel and Kirwa in the mid-180s – all in line with Jack Daniels’ findings.

Yet there are three runners with sub-180 cadences. There are Ethiopia’s Shure Demise and Mare Dibaba (unrelated to Tirunesh) in the mid-170s. And then there is Kenya’s Helah Kiprop running at only 165spm. Finishing seventh, a minute behind Chelimo this was far from her best race which was a Marathon Majors win in Tokyo in a time of 2:21:27. Knowing she can run a marathon around 20secs per mile faster opens up the question of whether she would achieve that pace through a quicker cadence, longer stride rate or a combination of the two. I would expect her to be capable of a quicker cadence as 165 is extremely low compared to all the other runners detailed.

Collating the data into table 7 for all 32 runners across the four races we see a symmetrical range of cadences where the majority are in the 180s – which aligns with the average cadence data being 183-185spm. But it also highlights that over a quarter of these runners can be running at sub-180 cadences.

 < 170170s180s190s200+
Cadence (SPM)181481
Table 7 – number of runners for each cadence grouping

While the variety of paces goes from 4:15/mile in the men’s 10,000m down to 6:15+/mile in the women’s marathon – we should remember these are all world class athletes who are training many hours per week and getting excellent coaching. They are running times many of us will only dream of and among these runners having a sub-180 cadence is not holding them back.

We’ve also glimpsed cadence at slower paces – the marathons have three men running at 5:49, 5:51, 6:10 per mile and four women running at 5:56, 5:58, 6:17, 6:17 – these are the paces for a 18-20min 5K.  The cadences for these seven runners are 179, 180, 185 and 177, 165, 175, 186.

This suggests, but is by no means definite that, as elite runners move towards recreational paces their cadence can be lower than 180. It’s also backed up by how when the men slowed in their race, four of six runners had lower cadences, while Callum Hawkins increased his pace by increasing his cadence as did each of the 10000m medallists.

In the final post in this series I will summarise what the cadence data can tell us about running and what it might mean for you as a recreational runner. Click here to go to it.

The Truth About Cadence Part 3

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 11893:57
Lap 21864:09
Lap 31933:49
Lap 42083:37
Table 1 – data for three medallists nearing the finish line

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 11844:30
Lap 21854:34
Lap 31804:13
Lap 42044:01
Table 2 – Ciara Mageean’s cadence at 1,500m

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.

The Truth About Cadence Part 2

In the introduction to this series I wrote about how running coach Jack Daniels spent the 1984 LA Olympics measuring the cadence of runners, but what he didn’t measure was the cadence of elite sprinters. This may simply have been because, as a distance running coach, he wasn’t interested by sprinters; or it may be because sprinters are significantly quicker making counting harder.

Fortunately World Athletics produced a series of reports from the 2017 World Championships giving us the data for sprinters as well as distance runners. Through the use of digital technology the research is very accurate. Using cameras capable of capturing up to 250 frames per second, runners were recorded in the middle of the home straight and then again in the 10 metres before the finish line.

At this point, we need to recognise that sprinters don’t work in cadence (number of steps in a minute) probably because their races are over in seconds. They refer to frequency or Step Rate (Hz) – how many steps they take per second!  Still to try and make it meaningful for this article, I’ve calculated the equivalent cadence – multiplying by sixty and rounding off – to get a value for a minute.

100m

Table 1 below shows the step rate and calculated cadence for the men’s 100m with competitors ordered by their finish place. Justin Gatlin took gold in 9.92secs, Christian Coleman silver in 9.94s and Usain Bolt took bronze in 9.95s – just 0.03seconds separating them.

The cadences were sampled during the mid-section of the race when athletes are accelerating and their cadences will still be high. We can see, with the exception of Bolt, that the cadences range from 278 (Prescod) to 300 (Simbine and Su). These are typical elite men’s values.  Usain Bolt’s turnover is notably lower at 263 which is probably because he is tall (6’5” / 1.95m) and that makes it harder to recover the legs quickly. This obviously didn’t stop him having a successful career as his height gives him a longer stride.

 Step Rate (Hz)Cadence (SPM)
Gatlin4.67280
Coleman4.95297
Bolt4.39263
Blake4.85291
Simbine5.00300
Vicaut4.90294
Prescod4.63278
Su5.00300
Table 1 – Men’s 100m final data at around halfway

In any sprint the cadence is highest at the beginning where athletes take small, quick steps to accelerate. As the race goes on they begin to rely on stride length (which is why Bolt excels in the later stages of both the 100m and 200m) and the cadence drops partly due to spending longer in the air – ‘longer’ is measured in hundredths of a second though.

Table 2 details only the medallists in the final 10metres of the race we can see the Step Rate / Cadence has dropped albeit it is still notably high. In such a tight race we can be sure all three sprinters are giving their best effort and therefore these values are representative. There’s roughly a 10% drop-off from earlier in the race.

 Step Rate (Hz)Cadence (SPM)
Gatlin4.24254
Coleman4.55273
Bolt3.97238
Table 2 – data for three medallists nearing the finish line

These sprint values are matched by women sprinters as you will see in table 3 below. Perhaps their values are a little lower overall but we can see from Baptiste and Ahouré that women are capable of the highest cadences. Just as the men use no one set cadence (or step frequency) throughout – it changes and adapts as the race goes on – the three female medallists do too.

Likewise, as Bolt showed how height affects cadence, we see Schippers at 5.9” (1.79m) has a slightly lower cadence than the others in the field at 275. Approaching the line there is a slight increase in her cadence, which is probably a negligible difference, and which probably reflects two World Championship golds won in the 200m and would have involved training speed endurance for a longer race.

 Step Rate (Hz)Cadence (SPM)
Bowie4.72 dropping to 3.97283 dropping to 238
Talou4.76 dropping to 4.46286 dropping to 268
Schippers4.59 increasing to 4.63275 increasing to 278
Ahouré4.95297
Thompson4.67280
Ahye4.85291
Santos4.81289
Baptiste5.00300
Table 3 – Women’s 100m final at halfway plus medallists nearing the finish

400m

In running one lap of the track as fast as possible, a world class 400m runner completes the distance in around 45 seconds if they’re male, 50s if they’re female.  It is an event where anaerobic energy plays a large part in creating the speed but where the build-up of ‘lactic acid’ causes the legs to start seizing up – particularly in the home straight. (It’s not really lactic acid but that’s the conventional wisdom).

The data presented in table 4 from the men’s 2017 World Championship final is taken at 350m – so the legs will be starting to struggle. Again runners are listed in their finishing order.

 Step Rate (Hz)Cadence (SPM)
Van Niekerk3.33200
Gardiner3.37202
Haroun3.66220
Thebe3.75225
Allen3.41205
Gaye3.85241
Kerley3.66220
Table 4 – Men’s 400m cadences in the home straight

And here in table 5 is the data for the women’s race.

 Step Rate (Hz)Cadence (SPM)
Francis3.37202
Naser3.62217
Felix3.33200
Miller-Uibo3.29197
Jackson3.80228
McPherson3.44206
Mupopo3.58215
Williams-Mills3.75225
Table 5 – Women’s 400m cadences in the home straight

With these values occurring in the home straight where the commentators say “the bear jumps on your back” due to the lactic build-up making the limbs feel heavy; we aren’t necessarily getting the entire picture of the cadences which 400m runners are capable of achieving.

Fortunately there is data available here detailing the cadences in the four quarters of the 2016 Rio Olympic final where Wayde van Niekerk set the world record running against two of his main rivals Kirani James and LaShawn Merrit; as well as the data from Michael Johnson’s previous world record run in 1999. While it appears these are manually counted by the blogger, the numbers are very close to those presented in the 2017 WC report for van Niekerk; a report which also contains data for Butch Reynolds who set the previous world record. This is all detailed in table 6.

 0-100m100-200m200m-300m300m-400m 0-100m100-200m200m-300m300m-400m
Van Niekerk (43.03WR)3.983.903.813.50 239234229210
Johnson (43.18WR)4.314.084.214.11 259245253247
Reynolds (43.29WR)3.653.743.743.64 219224224218
James (43.76)3.893.863.783.42 233232227205
Merritt (43.85)4.194.173.933.49 251250236209
Table 6 – comparison of elite 400m runners Step Rate and Cadence across whole race

What’s notable is the variance across the runners.  You go from Butch Reynolds who is consistently around 220 for the whole race up to Michael Johnson who is consistently around 250. In between the other runners all start off with a high cadence which is dropping off by the final 100m.

What we can say for sure is the longer sprint distance of 400m results in lower cadences than those in the 100m. Johnson has the highest cadence of anyone here at 259 in the first 100m and that’s below the 100m runners who, with the exception of Bolt, were in the 280-300 range.

This isn’t surprising as 400m runners tend to be taller than 100m runners, usually over 6’ / 1.85m taking long strides to cover the ground quickly which combines with a lower cadence.  It’s not always the case – Michael Johnson has the highest cadence yet is slightly taller than van Niekerk.  They may also have lower cadences or shorter strides because they are running slower – the male 400m runners are averaging just under 11 seconds per 100m.

I’ve deliberately not included stride lengths in this piece because it’s here to give an idea of cadences across events. But what Johnson and Reynolds show is how there is no one specific cadence or stride length being used to get them to a world record – each adopted what worked for them.

In the next article, it’s time to look at the middle distance runners – click here to go to it.

The Truth About Cadence Part 1

Is taking 180 steps per minute the magic number to aim for? Just about every search you do on the web will tell you it is. I’m not entirely sure though. As you will see almost all elites do indeed run with a cadence of 180+. But they’re elites and they’re typically only measured running at elite paces i.e. 5min / mile or better.

If you’ve arrived here by Google (or any other search engine of your choice) then you probably already know what cadence is.  If you didn’t – it relates to how many steps you’re taking per minute – your step rate, sometimes inaccurately referred to as stride rate. The two tend to be used interchangeably. Maybe that’s why it’s easier to refer to it as running cadence!

Your running cadence is likely to be somewhere between 160-200; although at one stage mine was as low as 150. It’s also possible for it to be a little higher than 200. If you’re walking it will be significantly lower – something like 100-120. All of it, as we shall see, depends on how fast you’re moving.

In the days when information was less accessible and sport science was still evolving; I recall reading that running speed is simply the result of how many steps you take in a minute and how far you travel with each step. This was made to sound mathematical by saying Running Speed = Step Frequency x Step Length.  If you take 200 steps in a minute and cover 1 metre with each then you run 200m in a minute therefore with 1,609 metres in a mile you’re running at 8min/mile.

I previously tackled Stride Length in a couple of articles written some time ago because I feel that’s more important for recreational runners to work on. But having written articles on how the glutes should power runners and how it’s possible to create high cadence by not using the glutes I wanted to dig further into the topic.

Origins of 180

In his Running Formula book, renowned coach Jack Daniels states that he and his wife spent the LA Olympics in 1984 counting the cadence of elite athletes. Rather than count the steps, they counted armswings because they’re always in sync – as a leg moves forward, an arm moves forward. It’s a good way of counting cadence which I use when I’m evaluating runners.

Jack found that 800m runners had the highest cadences of over 200 with other middle distance runners approaching this value. Once he turned to the runners in races longer than 3000m he found the cadence was lower; yet all but one runner had a cadence of 180 or more.

While I cannot state for certain this is where the magic 180 number came from, I think it’s quite likely. During those Olympics he counted 50 runners – male and female and therefore got a good sampling. These days we are lucky enough to have cadence monitoring built in to our GPS or smartwatches and if we want to look at elite runners we can watch playbacks on digital film or video.

In this series of posts, I’m going to provide you with the cadence data for contemporary runners. Some of it has been calculated with the latest digital cameras and film; others I’ve used Jack’s method of counting armswings! I’ll be looking at sprinters and middle distance runners as well as those doing the longer events like 10,000m and marathon that many recreational runners race too.

To read part 2 and find out the cadence of elite sprinters – click here.

Warm up like a pro

My Saturday morning parkrun routine hasn’t changed much over the decade since I started at Poole. I get up early, eat breakfast immediately to give it time to digest and then drink cups of tea. Just after 8am, I pick up my barcode, heart-rate monitor, change of kit and head out the door. Typically I arrive about 8:20am and sit in the car until 8:30am.

I’d love to live close enough to a local parkrun that I don’t need to drive but they’re all 4-5 miles away and so, while I run there on occasion, it’s usually a drive away. As I park I’ve already turned on my GPS watch yet invariably I still have to wait for the satellites to fully lock in. Once I have them I jog to the start line – which is about a kilometre away if I take the shortest route. But I don’t, I go round the lake which measures a bit longer at 2km and depending on how my legs are feeling takes a little longer or shorter than ten minutes to reach. What surprises me is how many people I pass who are just walking to the start. They aren’t jogging, they’re wandering along.

There are many things elite runners can do which the average recreational runner can’t – running at 4 min/mile pace, running 100 miles per week and training twice per day. One thing the recreational runner can do as well as any elite is warming up.

The typical recreational runner warms up by jogging over there then jogging back. It takes about a minute and they’ve done enough when their breathing starts to pick up. I should know because that’s how I used to do them. In my early days of parkrunning, I did the jog over there, jog back warm-up! It’s no wonder that after dashing off the start-line I’d be gasping for breath until things began to settle down around the first mile mark. That’s what happens when you don’t warm-up properly.

A thorough warm-up is not achieved quickly.  Any elite athlete, whether footballer, runner or tennis player will take the better part of thirty minutes to do one. They will do some jogging, dynamic stretching, mobility drills and sport specific movement such as kicking or hitting a ball. I’m not advocating we take it to that level for a weekly parkrun but an easy-to-do, simple running warm-up can be done in 10-15minutes.

At some point, for some forgotten reason, I decided to start doing a longer warm-up. I have no idea why, but it had long lived in my memory what Ian Parker-Dodd, one of my university lecturers, had said “It takes twelve minutes for the body to reach steady state”.  I didn’t know what that meant when he told us but I knew it was something to do with warming up – so twelve minutes became my standard.

Looking back at my records from 2012 I didn’t have a regular time for setting off on warm-up – that evolved later. It probably depended on what time I’d arrived and how quickly I got my gear sorted. Typically I’d amble off at around 8:30am to run a lap of the lake, possibly taking in a toilet stop. It took anywhere between 12-15mins just as Ian Parker-Dodd suggested. The effect was notable – I knocked 45seconds off my parkrun PB. Who knew there was a reason the elites warm-up?!?

This standard warm-up was partly dictated by the features of the park – once I was on the far side of the lake there’s no shortcut back. That said I’d picked the route because I wanted to meet IPD’s time requirement. This ended up totalling just over 1½ miles (2½ km) and is what worked for me. It’s important to think in terms of time – if you tell a slower runner to go do another half of a parkrun before they start, they’ll switch off. Doing 5K is already enough for them. For anyone taking over 30mins for 5K, jogging at the slowest of paces for twelve mins is likely to still be too much but perhaps five minutes is a good compromise.

One mistake I made in my early warm-ups was running them too fast. With my parkruns being run at sub-7 min/mile pace; running my warm-up at 8min/mile was too quick. It left me a little drained before the run. Eventually I slowed them down to 9-10min/mile. These days I start at that pace and let it build up as I warm up, never pushing it. Quite often I’ll be running the latter part of my warm-up around 7:15/mile and that’s okay – it’s doesn’t last too long and I’ve warmed up through the lower paces to get there. When I’m zooming along at the faster pace, barely breathing hard I know my body is warmed throughout.

What occurs during warm-up

While warming up could help you to run faster and breathe easier you may be wondering what’s going on that enables this?

We all know that when we start jogging we soon begin to breathe harder. Typically that’s when we slow down to a more achievable level or, if using the jog over there then jog back warm-up, stop. Muscles use oxygen to create energy and when you start to jog, you activate more muscle so the oxygen demand goes up. Warming up is the body responding to this increased demand.

The first thing is for the heart to start pumping faster – we see this as our pulse increasing. Alongside this, by breathing harder we expel more carbon dioxide out of the lungs allowing more air into them. The sacs of the lungs open up to allow more air in which leads to more oxygen entering the bloodstream which the heart can then pump to the muscles.

When the muscles receive the oxygen from the bloodstream they use it to release energy from glucose and fat stores. The complex breakdown process creates by-products such as carbon dioxide as well as heat and water. While the CO2 is breathed out, the heat and water are sent to the skin to help us cool. To make it easier to sweat, warming up triggers the pores of the skin to open up.

Many runners feel stiff or uncoordinated when they first start running. Warming up helps the muscles, ligaments and tendons get mobile. The tightness and aches may alleviate as a warm-up goes on and you will probably feel your stride lengthen until you are flowing along.

By warming up systematically you can find out if there are any strains or injuries that might need to be taken account of and even that it’s not a good idea to push things today. Sometimes a good warm-up will ease these and then you can run fast.

As well as monitoring the body, a warm-up can be a good time to mentally focus on what you’re intending to do on your run or training session. Will you be going out fast? Holding back? Doing some complicated interval session?

If you run some of the route you’ll be participating on it’s a good opportunity to see if there are any issues. Running around Poole Park, I often find there can be puddles or muddy patches down the back of the lake. They’re not enough for the organisers to cancel the parkrun but I know I will want to position myself on the run to avoid them. On an unfamiliar course, it’s even better to get to know where the tight spots are and maybe just where the course goes. Obviously on a longer race you can’t run the whole course but I’ve always found it useful to get a feel for the run-in to the finish to get an idea of where I might want to start my sprint finish.

How to warm-up

Just start jogging very slowly. Focus on your breathing and if it starts to pick up then don’t panic, just slow down a little. Probably it will settle within a minute or two so just keep jogging while it does. When it’s settled you will naturally find yourself willing to push a little harder. That’s okay as long as you don’t stress your breathing to the point where it doesn’t settle.

Each time your breathing begins to get out of kilter, avoid pushing – just wait and see what happens. Eventually you’ll find yourself jogging along at a particular pace which feels comfortable, isn’t getting faster but isn’t stressing your breathing – you’ve reached the Steady State. While IPD said it takes twelve minutes to reach steady state, it differs by individual. Some will get there quicker, others take a little longer. Personally I’d say it takes 15+ minutes for me to reach it – natural distance runners will likely get there quicker.

Having reached steady state it’s time to warm up the race pace muscles. While my warm-up pace may reach around 7:15/mile; on my parkrun I’m hoping to hit 6:30/mile or quicker. I need to prime the body to know I’m going to do more than I’ve done this far in warm-up. But I also don’t want to exhaust the muscles by doing too much. The compromise is therefore to do some short bursts of quick running known as strides or pickups.

All I do is accelerate for 10-20secs to just beyond race pace then go back to jogging before I do another. Warning – these are not all-out sprints – just an acceleration to a faster speed to get the body used to the quicker pace. Three of these efforts is usually enough to get me breathing harder and the muscles ready for what’s expected from the start-line.

I like to complete this warm-up about ten minutes before the start. This is long enough that if I’ve overdone it the body will recover; but not so long that it will cool down again.

As I say on my arrival at parkrun I often encounter runners walking to the start-line. While I do meet other committed runners warming up the vast majority aren’t. It’s a little bit of a mystery to me why if they have to walk to the start-line from wherever they’ve come, they don’t turn that into a benefit and jog in.  Okay, they may not do the full warm-up but even 5-6 mins is better than nothing.

Run like it’s the 60s

October 1964 and it’s the Tokyo Olympics. New Zealander Peter Snell is competing in the 800m where he aims to repeat as Olympic champion. Since winning in Rome four years earlier, he has broken the world record in the 800m, 880yd, 1000m and mile. In the final he runs 1:45.1 to win by half a second.

Peter Snell winning the 800m at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome (© AFP / Getty Images)

August 2021 and it’s the pandemic delayed Tokyo Olympics. In the 800m final, Kenya’s Emmanuel Korir takes gold in 1:45.06 – just four-hundredths of a second quicker than Snell had run almost sixty years before.

Snell’s 800m world record of 1:44.3 is barely a couple of seconds behind David Rudisha’s record of 1:40.91sec. While modern runners are capable of running quicker times they aren’t that much faster. In Snell’s era he had the disadvantage of running on tracks which were still either grass or cinder and wearing shoes which didn’t involve hightech carbon footplates.

All too often I see complicated training plans and  methods being targeted at recreational runners and  find myself thinking it was all so much simpler in Snell’s day. His coach, Arthur Lydiard, is renowned for revolutionising running with 100 mile weeks and periodised training. The interval training methods which allowed Roger Banister to become the first sub-4 minute miler were still used, but only for a short part of the year while the remainder was spent building the aerobic base.

This isn’t going to be a deepdive into Lydiard’s method – just some things I want you to consider about the circumstances and era in which his runners trained. Perhaps there is something we can learn from how runners trained in the 1960 particularly if we’re still only recreational or sub-elite runners.

While I have no firsthand experience of the era because I was born in the 1970s, the society I grew up in was still structured in much the same ways. Colour television had only just become the norm, we walked to school where there was no national curriculum. Home computers, games consoles and the internet were still science fiction. As kids we played outside, climbing trees and playing football on the street until it was time for tea or it got dark.

I didn’t get my first digital watch until the 1980s, own a wireless heart-rate monitor until the 1990s, see a GPS watch until the 2000s or start using Strava until the 2010s. I’ve yet to own a smartwatch or download a phone app which can track my sleep, breathing rate or measure any number of other variables.

My grandfather, born in 1897, owned a pocket watch which I now have tucked away in a drawer. When my dad turned eighteen my grandfather gave him a gold wristwatch as a birthday present. These watches were hand wound daily because there was no battery power. I doubt my dad would ever have risked playing sport wearing his wristwatch – it was too valuable. I’d imagine that’s true of Lydiard’s guys who ran in the 1960s. While coaches had stopwatches for timing athletes at the track, distance runners were left to approximate the distance of their runs and log it in a notebook if they were so inclined. There definitely wasn’t a Strava upload for Kudos!

The closest they came to heart-rate training was counting their pulse at the end of an interval effort. Distance runners just went out and ran. For me this might be the most significant difference between modern runners and those of Lydiard’s generation. They had very little data available to them and they just ran to feel.

There was no concept of training by heart-rate because a distance runner couldn’t run along counting his pulse. Consequently you never heard a runner return from a run and say “That was a zone 2 training run”. They just went out and ran.

Those runners didn’t have smartwatches telling them how much time was required for recovery before their next hard effort. They didn’t rely on a watch to tell them how much sleep they got. They just listened to their bodies and if they weren’t feeling great backed off.

They didn’t have GPS telling them the current pace or breaking down mile splits, so they never went for runs at say “Marathon” or “Easy” pace. While Threshold runs, Tempo runs and Progression runs were a thing of the future; they did vary their daily distance runs. Lydiard had a simple fractional system to indicate the effort to use – 1/4, 1/2, 3/4s or on a Time Trial it was 7/8ths.

In compiling 100 mile weeks, Lydiard’s runners were typically running 10-15 miles every day with a long run of 22 miles on a hilly course on Sundays. They didn’t have gels or hydration packs. They just ran and let their bodies adapt to the training.  If the body runs out of fuel it adapts by being able to store more muscle glycogen. Not only this but by doing all these miles they were teaching the body to burn more fats and the glycogen more efficiently.

While I’m not advising any recreational runner to start doing 100 mile training weeks, training more frequently is helpful. By training seven days per week, Lydiard’s runners rarely got to run feeling fresh and rested. That forced them to listen to their bodies and slow the pace on the days they were tired.

Of course, lifestyles in the 1960s were different with a standard 9-5 working day and fewer entertainment options in the evening outside of watching television or going to the pub! Generally modern runners have many more things competing for attention in their lives and it is only the most dedicated marathoners who run every day and log big mileage. Nonetheless running more frequently, even if only for a short time or distance has benefits.

These days runners start with a goal in mind – they want to run a 5K or complete a marathon and the distance becomes the focus of their training. Runners in Lydiard’s day started as track athletes contesting races of a mile or less. If you weren’t a good sprinter, maybe you had enough speed for middle distance – races lasting less than five minutes. They had strong legs, big hearts and powerful lungs, strengthened in the winter by cross-country. As they got older, runners moved up to longer distances and finally the marathon. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to run long distance immediately – after all parkruns, 10Ks and marathons are the most accessible races to enter. But the tendency of modern runners is to value training for distance over building speed first.

There’s no doubt with 100-mile weeks, Lydiard’s runners ran distance but that all ended when the track season came around. For three to four months they would focus on rebuilding their speed. Many modern runners are now so focused on their races that they never set aside time to build speed. They’ve got distance races booked in one after another and all too often there’s a marathon on the horizon which definitely doesn’t give them much scope for improving speed. Many training plans and systems try to work on speed and distance at the same time but I contend that it’s very difficult for a sub-elite runner who hasn’t already maximise their speed previously to do this.

We live in different times. Times where runners are marketed gadgets, nutrition, training plans and races. Runners of the past didn’t have these yet they somehow managed to be almost as fast as runners of today.

They didn’t have watches or apps to tell them how they felt. They didn’t take gels or hydration packs on training runs. Their training was simply to go out and run hard or easy every day to build stamina in the winter before heading to the track for speedwork in the summer as the racing season approached. Many modern elite runners still do these things with the gadgets supporting training, not defining it. Recreational runners often don’t and maybe it’s time for them to reconsider whether they’re helped or hindered by a modern lifestyle.

Training for Speed Matters – Part 3

If you missed the previous posts, you can find part 1 here and part 2 here

In attempting any activity the body tries to do it as efficiently as possible. When we pick up a pencil off the table, our fingers know how tightly to hold it, our arm and shoulder knows how much effort is required to lift it. If we drop that pencil and it rolls under the sofa, the body knows it needs to use a different level of effort to move the heavy sofa out of the way. If we go to the gym and try to pick up a 20kg weight it adjusts again. Much of this is learned through prior experience, our eyes know the size and shape of an object and make a best estimate of what it needs to do. We can get caught out trying to lift a small box or can that turns out to be filled with dense material but we quickly adjust to be able to complete the task.

It’s the same with exercise. Walking doesn’t take as much effort as jogging which itself is easier than running. When you sprint it’s an all-out effort and yet, if you try to sprint up a hill the body tries to work even harder.

Although we think of running as needing strong legs – it’s more than that. We also need strong hips and glutes; it’s about the core muscles and to a lesser extent the upper body shoulders and arms. Again, depending on how fast you’re trying to run, the more muscle your body recruits to get the job done.

At a slow walk your arms just swing back and forth; in an all-out sprint you will drive your arms backwards and forwards as well as use them for balance and stability. You only need to look at the difference between sprinters and marathon runners to see how different their physiques are.

This is the primary reason why you should be working on your speed – it recruits more muscle. If your top-end pace can’t get you below six minutes per mile –  you are never going to run any distance quicker than this. However if your top-end speed is four minute mile, you can do all the things you could when your top-end speed was six minute mile and everything in between. What’s not to like?!

For many of those runners who are stuck jogging around at ten minute miles. Imagine what training to be able to run at six minute mile pace … or quicker gives them. Suddenly where eight minute miles felt difficult, it begins to feel easier because it’s no longer top of the range.

Yet remember what I said about the body being efficient?  If you never train at high paces to get faster then gradually your body forgets the speed ability it has. This is often why older distance runners are slow – they stopped training their speed and focused on extended efforts. Inevitably there is some loss of speed due to ageing, but nowhere near as much as many runners believe.

It’s not just the skeletal muscles which benefit from training speed, it also works the heart and lungs and usually very hard if you put in a big effort and don’t give yourself easy recoveries. While it is unpleasant to be gasping for air – barely able to jog between efforts – in time it prompts your heart and lungs to adapt.

Your heart grows larger to pump more oxygenated blood to the muscles and potentially your lung capacity increases. The lungs become stronger and therefore more forceful when expelling carbon dioxide and breathing in air.

This training is going to make your running feel easier. Stronger legs, lower heart-rate, easier breathing.

If you decide to start training for speed, ease into it and, of course, if you have any health concerns – check with a health professional before pulling out all the stops and giving speed training a try.

If you’re unsure of how to start, I can help you with my 3-month speed training programme. Just go to the Contact page and message me to get more details.