Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Cadence?

Last night I went out for a hesitant run because my right ankle had been feeling particularly wonky. Truth be told I had doubts about my ability to run at all. But as the saying goes, in every grey cloud there is a silver lining, and mine came in the form of a lesson on cadence.

As I started out on my jog (having dropped the boys off at Beavers and basketball practice, and therefore giving myself just enough time for a quick 5km run) I was by no means in my happy place. My ankle felt like Cleveland after "The Decision", though I knew I'd get over it much faster than Cavs fans ever will. As a result I was forced to take smaller steps to limit the amount of work my ankle had to do. Also, because I was in a bit of a time crunch I was also forced to pick up the pace in order to complete my run in time to shower and get back to picking up the boys from their activities.

Then I had one of those zen moments and decided to count how many steps I was taking in a minute. More accurately, I decided to see how many steps I COULD take in a minute. In the back of my mind I had the knowledge that the best cadence is somewhere around 90 steps per minute per foot (full rotations) and I wanted to see if what felt like a fast turnover for me would approach that number.

My first test ended up at 86 steps with the right foot, and I though this wasn't too bad. It didn't feel entirely comfortable, but it didn't feel like I was trying that hard either. Without knowing it my pace had increased significantly! Buoyed by this I decided to try and maintain a high cadence for the rest of the run, testing myself again a couple of kilometres later. The second test came in the second to last kilometre and I managed 85 steps, this time counting the left foot (not that it matters). You can see by my splits that the more I concentrated on cadence the better things got as far as my pace splits went:

1. 6:10 (9:56/mile)
2. 5:12 (8:23/mile)
3. 5:03 (8:08/mile)
4. 4:41 (7:32/mile)
5. 4:28 (7:11/mile)

Looks like I will be concentrating on cadence from now on since I found this to be a very good and rewarding exercise. Something else to focus on, and with seemingly terrific results on overall speed.

In other completely unrelated news I want to direct your attention to the story of Canadian Simon Bairu, who ran and had to drop out of his first ever marathon over the weekend in a little known event called the New York City Marathon. After hitting the wall pretty hard he went through an ordeal that I would not have expected at a "world class" event, and especially given that he is an Elite athlete and was in the lead pack until being forced to stop as his legs and body gave out. The thing that got me the most is that the paramedics told him they were NOT ALLOWED to give him any food!!! What the hell is up with that?!

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2 Comments:

Blogger Ace said...

The cadence thought is a good reminder. I've been falling behind in that area.

November 10, 2010 at 4:20 PM  
Blogger Nelly said...

Love the comparison of your ankle with Lebron James's "decision", haha My favorite part about that whole thing is when they showed Cavs fans they were already burning his jersey, but when they cut away to Heat fans at a bar guys were going completely insane =)

November 10, 2010 at 7:00 PM  

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