Try this simple exercise the next time you are out running: count every time your right foot strikes the pavement for one minute. Multiple by 2. This is your stride rate. Your stride rate can be a symptom of bad form, which can lead to slower times and even worse, injury.

So, what should your stride rate be? Daniels’ Running Formula dedicates a page or two to the topic and notes that most elite runners are almost all right around 180 strides/minute, regardless of distance (excluding sprint distances), whereas most beginner runners are much less, usually around 160 strides/min. When you are in the 160 range, you are wasting a good deal of energy pushing yourself upwards, instead of propelling yourself forward. Not only does this slow you down, but it also can lead to nasty knee injuries from all of the pounding. Leaps and bounds are not a good thing when talking about your stride.

After reading this in Daniels’ Running Formula, I went out and counted my strides. I routinely did around 160 str/minute. It was no coincidence, I think, that I also had suffered many repetitive stress knee injuries from running. Furthermore, my best 5K time was in the 21 minute range, and wasn’t changing much, despite the additional training I was doing. I decided to alter my stride rate to get it up in the 180 range. I did this in a gradual way, using the treadmill as a guide. I started by putting the treadmill on 8 minute/miles (I usually trained in the 7 min/mile range at the time, since I hadn’t learned Daniels formula yet), and religiously counted my strides for miles on end at this interminably slow pace. It felt quite awkward at first, almost unnatural. However, within a week, it felt quite natural, so I started to do some experimentation, by speeding up and slowing down, while maintaining my stride rate. I would do 1 minute at 6 min/mile pace followed by 2 minutes at 8 minute pace or I would try a couple of minutes at 7 minute pace. In a sense, I was calibrating my gears, which is a very important capability for runners, as it allows you to know, based on feel, how fast or slow you are running. Once you get good at this, you will be able to tell, within a 20 feet or so, how far you have run solely by how long you run at the pace you feel. For another week I concentrated very specifically on what each pace felt like, how long my stride was, how my breathing was affected, etc. Finally, I felt quite comfortable, and began doing a full 24 week program as recommended by Daniels.

I think the results speak for themselves. My next 5K time shaved almost 2.5 minutes off of my PR. Not only that, but several other runners I have shared this with who have had similar improvements.

So, next time you are out for a run, do some math while you are running to see where your stride rate is and how it compares to the elites. Naturally, changing your stride rate alone is not going to make you an elite runner, but it should make you more efficient and faster.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 27th, 2005 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Running, Triathlon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.