Making Every Stride Count

There are two ways to go faster – take longer or faster strides. Changes in stride length are largely dictated by fitness, strength, and flexibility. However, you can increase your speed by increasing you stride rate without a big increase in fitness.

At 8:00/mile pace, taking 80 strides/minute (spm, left-right = one stride), you will take 640 strides (1,280 steps) in a mile, 4’ 1.5” per step. With just a small increase to 82spm, without a change in stride length, you will cover a mile in 7:48. That’s 1:13 faster for a 10km, over 5 min faster for a marathon. Who wouldn’t take that?

One of the most visible differences between elites and most other runners is their stride rates. Elite runners do ~90spm in marathons, faster in shorter races, and increase their stride rate when kicking. The average runner may only have a stride rate in the low 80s, and it may not vary much with speed or distance.

A faster stride rate not only makes you run faster, but it is more efficient. The biggest difference between 80spm and 90spm is how much time your feet are on the ground. The more time on the ground, the more momentum you lose actually slowing yourself down. You are absorbing more of the ground impact in your muscles, joints, and shoes rather than transferring that force into forward movement.

Counting

The first thing to do is to count your strides while you run. The purpose is to do two things. First, find out where you are. Second, the simple act of counting will make you more aware of your stride rate, and tend to make you start to stride faster.

Count for a minute or two. Do it a few times during your runs, and at different types of runs. Note how your stride rate differs over pace, terrain, and fatigue. Also note how different stride rates feel. Most newer running watches count strides for you making this easy. Log these counts as your base rate, then track your progress over time.

Many of you may have heard that 90/180spm is an ideal stride rate. Wrong. There is no one ideal rate for all runners. That’s like saying there is an ideal way to sing regardless of whether you are a baritone or soprano. We have different muscle types, joint alignment, flexibility, etc. If you are significantly below 90/180, training to increase your tempo is something you would probably benefit from. If your stride rate is already fast, there are other things that may be better to work on. Regardless, think about improving incrementally rather than hitting a specific number.

Striders

Add Striders to your training, focusing on stride rate. For those who don’t know what Striders are, it’s a series of short sprints. Many group track workouts incorporate Striders into their warm-ups. They’ll sprint the straights, and jog the curves. You don’t need a track to do this. All you need is a fairly flat and smooth area, where you sprint for 20-40 strides, and jog for 30-60 strides (same distance, about 50% more strides).

Gradually build your speed for the first half (50m on the track), carry that speed to the finish, then gradually slow down. The focus shouldn’t be on how fast you can stride rather how fast you can. Keep your stride short and quick. Imagine running on hot coals so that you want to lift your feet as soon as they hit the ground. Does that mean making your stride shorter? It’s not about shortening your stride, but on how quickly you can stride off after landing. What will happen is that when you start your sprint, your stride may be shorter, but as you speed up your stride, your stride will naturally lengthen.

You can also do striders at the end of easier, shorter runs, as well as in the middle (part) of your longer runs.

Striders are a great warm-up before a speed workout or race. After the easy jog part of your warm-up, a minute or two before the start of intervals, a few minutes before the start of a race (especially shorter/higher effort races), do a series of striders (4-8, depending on weather and how hard you are going to run).

Don’t reach with your stride. Let me repeat that. DON’T REACH!

Stairs

Running stairs can force you into a quicker stride. Bleachers/stadiums, office buildings, and for those of you in the Denver area, Red Rocks Amphitheatre are good places to run stairs. At Red Rocks (the side stairs, not the bleachers), I can easily take 2 or 3 stairs per step. However, I usually choose to take only one per step, forcing me into a short, quick, and light stride. If you don’t have access to stairs, you can get the same effect on a smooth, steep hill, but you have to consciously force yourself to take quick strides like running on hot coals.

Hills, up and down

Running hills, both up and down, tends to magnify flaws in your form, making them easier to feel and work on. Running uphill, the time your foot spends on the ground exaggerates the loss of momentum. Downhill, it exaggerates the pounding and braking.

Uphill: Find a fairly steep hill, not too technical, that you can run and maintain decent form). Start by running in place, with short, quick strides (sort of like a running start), lean forward, skip and/or stutter step, then start moving forward. The skip/stutter step gets you into a quick, stride mode. Stride as quickly as you can, a little more than is comfortable (like striders). Exaggerate your arm swing, focusing a little more in the backwards swing of the arm. Drive your knees up and forward. Run until your form and rhythm starts to break, usually around 20 seconds.

Downhill: It can be easier to get a fast stride rate going downhill. Find a gradual, smooth downhill grade where you don’t have to worry about footing or braking. Lean forward, bending at your ankles, not your waist. As you start to fall, start striding. Start slowly and gradually pick up the pace. Focus on lifting your feet as soon as they touch the ground (like running on hot coals). Let gravity do the work moving you forward. Keep your feet moving to keep from falling over.

More Spring in your Stride

When your feet hit the ground, your feet and calves absorb some of the force, then should return it like a spring to propel you forward. You can improve your springiness by practicing dynamic, spring-like exercises.

Jumping rope is a great exercise for this. You have to spring up quickly off the balls of your feet. You don’t have to actually jump rope. Simply hopping in place is good.

You can do something similar with a stair, or other stable, fairly low platform. Stand on the lowest stair. Hop down, then quickly hop back up. Don’t let your heels touch the ground, and spring up as soon as your feet hit the ground at the bottom.

Another drill, on stairs or a curb, is to start with one foot up on the stair/curb and one down. Quickly, alternate feet up and down, switching as soon as you land.

Listen to the Music

For some, running to the beat can help their stride rate. I don’t listen to music when I run, so I can’t speak from personal experience, but I know many of you do. You can program your own tunes. Note the beat of those tunes, and load music with a slightly faster beat than your base spm. You can also buy music programmed for specific beat rates. A metronome might help too, when running on a treadmill.

Ultras

It can be hard to maintain a high stride rate in ultras, especially when hiking. This is still worth working on. The less time you spend on the ground, the more efficient you will be. When the hill is steep and long, when you’re tired, it’s turnover, not power, that keeps my momentum going. Training a higher tempo will make relatively faster ultra spm seem easier.

Personal Experience

In the 1980s, when I was mainly doing triathlons, I used to do 80spm regardless of whether I was running at a 5:30 or 8:30 pace. I was so consistent that I could accurately time my runs by counting my strides – 400 strides and I’d be within a second or two of 5 minutes.

I started working on my stride rate many years ago. I regularly do striders and uphill sprints. When doing striders and hill sprints, I focus more on leg turnover than speed. When doing intervals, the focus is equal. Now, I do ~100spm on 30-second hill sprints and striders, close to 90 for a 5km, high 80s for a ½-marathon. It’s still a work in progress.

Changing your stride rate doesn’t happen over night. But it can happen over time, with practice.

Striding faster will make you a faster and more efficient runner, without requiring you to get a lot fitter. It takes time and practice, but the ability to increase your stride rate is important for all runners. Start practicing. I’m counting on you.

Train Smart. Have Fun. See you on the trails and roads.
https://runuphillracing.com/
When in doubt, run uphill!

Tapering

Do you look forward to tapering or fear it? “What is supposed to be a relaxing time to rest and recover … [can be] a time of intense anxiety,” writes Stephanie Kinnon in an article titled “The Terror of Tapering.”

Tapering can be stressful. Many questions may be running through your mind.

• Should I taper?
• Will I lose my fitness if I back off?
• Have I trained enough?
• Can I squeeze in one more interval session or long run?
• When should I start my taper?
• How much should I run and how hard?

Pause. Take a few deep breaths. Relax.

Yes, you should taper for a big race. A “big” race is one you want to do well in whether that’s ¼-mile or 100.

Training is a repeated process of stress followed by recovery and build. When you train, you stress your body. Your body responds to the stress by building back stronger if you don’t overstress it and give it time to recover. In the midst of training, you don’t fully recover. You want to recover enough to continue training at the level you need to continue to build your fitness.

For a big race, you want more of a recovery. That doesn’t mean complete rest. It means doing enough to keep your body’s systems primed to race while but allowing your body a greater recovery. No, you will not lose any significant fitness. I’ll get into how below. For now, don’t underestimate the value of fresh legs.

No, you probably shouldn’t try to squeeze in one last hard workout close to a big race.

The question “Have I done enough?” doesn’t really matter late in the game. You’ve done what you’ve done. Adaptation to new stress, new training stimulus takes weeks. It’s the repeated exposure to that stimulus throughout training that matters. Thus, a single extra workout will not add much, but that extra workout could lead to illness, injury, or fatigue on race day. If you think you’ve prepared well, trust your training. If you think you’ve fallen short, modify your goals. It’s too late to fix it.

Don’t add anything new to your training. New means harder and longer as well as different. I like to count back 6-8 weeks from my target race. That’s when I want to be at my peak training level, my longest run and/or hardest speed/hill session. That doesn’t mean I start my taper then. I’ll repeat those hard sessions the last few weeks leading into my taper, but won’t increase them.

Minimize weights and resistance training. The goal of tapering is to have fresh muscles at the start. You’ve done the work. Let your body absorb it.

Tapering is as much art as science. It’s as individual to the person as it is the event. Rather than giving you a specific recipe, here are some guidelines to follow.

1. Maintain the same schedule if you can. Your body becomes used to rhythms. If you’ve been running 5 days/week, keep running those same 5 days.
2. Cut back on volume. In general, race week should be < 50% of total volume. If you’re doing a 3-week taper off of 60 miles/week, the final three weeks might be 45, 35, 25. Do so by shortening your runs rather than skipping one. If not sure, err on the side of less rather than more.
3. Maintain the intensity with caveats. Keep doing your speedwork but shorten the number or repetitions. In general, you don’t need to do them any faster than race pace/effort during taper. If you’re training for a marathon and been doing your speed sessions faster than marathon race pace (MRP), slow them down to MRP. If you’re training for an ultra, I would continue to do striders (You’re not? You should); ~30 seconds with a focus on leg turnover not speed, short, quick strides. Striders are good during the taper for all distance.
4. The week of, only do easy/recovery runs with some striders and perhaps a short tempo at race pace/effort; e.g., a couple of miles at marathon race pace for a marathon, 5 minutes or so at 5k pace for a 5k.

How long should you taper?

• 5k – 10k: 1 week.
• ½-Marathon: 2 weeks.
• Marathon: 3 weeks.
• 50 – 100mi: 3-4 weeks.

These are guidelines, not hard and fast rules. Listen to your body. In general, err on the side of too little than too much. Any fitness loss from tapering will be nominal and more than offset by having a rested body. It’s better to go into a big race a bit undertrained than 1% overtrained, with well rested legs rather than a depleted body.

Knowing the physiology doesn’t necessarily ease the anxiety. Your taper needs to address the mind as well as the body. If you’re anxious and feel the need to do more, it’s OK to add an extra short/easy run or a set of striders. Something short and fast, like striders, can be good at alleviating nerves. Just remember to keep it short and not too hard. If you/your legs feel like they want to run more and fast, that’s good. Do just enough to ease the mind so that you’ll have that feeling at the start line.

Food: As you cut back on training, you might want to cut back on eating, but only a bit. You don’t want to gain weight, but you also don’t want to go hungry. For those who count calories, the calories you burn are not just what you use in training, but also in recovery and basic daily functioning. Your metabolism should already be fairly high from training into the taper. The best way to cut back during tapering is to cut out/back on junk food and snacks, and perhaps slightly smaller portions at meals. Keep the more nutritious foods and less of the empty calories. Indulge after.

Sleep is important in training in general as well as in tapering. Sleep is where your body does most of its repairing and strengthening. Sleep as well as you can to let your body get ready to race. Sleeping well the night before can be challenging for many. If you sleep well in the days prior, you don’t have to worry as much about the night before.

Should you race prior to your “A” race? That depends. A shorter, training “B” race can be a good test of your training and good way to practice for the “A” race. You can try your shoes, nutrition, hydration, pacing, night before, breakfast day of, etc.

If you want to do a “B” race, you can do a mini-taper and recovery. Back off for a few days, perhaps a week leading into the race. Use that week as a down week; most good training plans will include a down/recovery week every few weeks. Use the race as a hard workout, not necessarily all out. Then, take a few easy days after the race. Elites might be able to race a hard ½-marathon 3-6 weeks before a marathon. That doesn’t mean the rest of us can. Note that Kipchoge didn’t race prior to his record breaking Berlin marathon (I think his last race was in March).

Tapering is my second favorite part of training. Training can be wearing both physically and psychologically. I see tapering as a reward for a long stretch of training. It’s a time to rest my body and relax my mind. I realize not everyone thinks like I do. Know that there’s very little you can do to help at this point but a lot you can do to put all that effort to waste. All I can say is trust in your training, trust in yourself. Take all that work you’ve done and make sure it’s ready to use on race day.

Train smart. Have fun. Smile. See you on the trails (and roads).

Run Uphill Racing

INTRODUCING SPEED

If you want to get faster, you have to train fast. Speed training also brings improved stride power and efficiency, and metabolic (energy) performance. That will help you whether you’re racing 1-mile or 100-miles.

Relax. Speed training doesn’t mean you have to run on a track or do highly structured workouts. Speed workouts can be done almost anywhere, and there are many ways to get it done that can be fun. You don’t have to do the “best” workouts. If you don’t like them, you’re less likely to do them. It’s better to find ways that you will do. Consistency is more important that perfection.

Running Track

Should you do speed training if you’re running 100-miles? YES. A more powerful and efficient stride will translate to a better stride even at a slow, ultra pace. The improved metabolic efficiency will enable you to run faster and longer at an easy, ultra effort.

Speed training can increase the risk of injury. So, especially if you haven’t done speed training, or not in a while, I’ll start off with some cautions/advice.

• Develop a good running base before going fast. This can mean weeks or months of mostly low intensity running. A good base builds muscle strength and cardiovascular fitness to be able to handle high intensity training.
• Always warm up well before going fast. Warming up means jogging, starting slowly, to gradually loosen up and literally warm up your muscles and joints. The colder it is, the longer you’ve been sitting/idle, the older you are, and the faster (relative to you) you’ll be going, the longer you’ll need to warmup. Warmup can be anywhere from 5 – 20 minutes.
• Add some mobility exercise to increase your range of motion:
  • Leg swings – With one arm on something like a lamppost for balance, swing each leg side-to-side and forward-and-back. 10-20 times.
  • Calf dips/raises – Standing with the ball of your foot on a curb or stair, drop your heels down and raise them up above your toes. 10-20 times.
  • Butt kickers – Run forward, not too fast, short stride. Exaggerate your back kick so your heels hit your butt, or a close as you can within the range of your flexibility.
  • High knees – Run forward, not too fast, short stride. Exaggerate your knee lift in front to your chest level, if possible. Skipping is a great way of doing this.
  • Skipping.
  • Lateral slide – In a slight squat, shuffle laterally in each direction. You can cross your legs in front and behind as you do this, called grapevine or carioca.
  • Single leg squats (no weight needed).
• Focus more on stride rate than absolute running speed. DON’T reach with your stride. Keep your stride under you rather than out front. Pretend you’re running on hot coals to keep your stride quick and light.
• Think more about effort than speed. These are not races. Do the work properly and the speed will come.
• Build into the speed. Don’t blast out at max like you’re running the 100m Olympic finals. I like to take a few skips before I start, then build to full speed over a few strides.
• Run the fast stuff uphill. It’s hard to overstride on hills. Also, there’s less pounding uphill. Legendary runner Frank Shorter once said “hills are speedwork in disguise.”
• Try to maintain the same speed through a set of intervals. The first one should feel relatively easy and the last one fairly hard.
• These are not races. You should not be setting PRs in a workout. Leave a little on the table. Go a little less than all out, and stop when you think you still have one more in you.

Here are some minimally structured workouts that can be done almost anywhere.

Pickups: This means picking up the speed for a bit during a run. Go hard for short time, perhaps 15-30 seconds. It can be easier to count strides than look at your watch; the equivalent is about 25-50 strides (left-right = 1 stride). Run easy for a while until you catch your breath, then repeat. Do a few of these a couple of times/week.

Fartlek is Swedish for speed play. In the middle of a run, go fast for a while, then easy for a while. You can use landmarks to guide you. For example, go hard for 3 lampposts, easy for 2. If you’re on trails, use short uphills to go hard, and flats/downhills to go easy, or go hard for a switchback or two, then easy for the same. The point is to play with it, have fun with it. Make it as structured or loose as you want.

To start, don’t worry about how much time you spend running fast or how you do it. Spending some time at speed – getting your legs turning over faster and your heart/lungs working harder – is better than none. Get your body and mind used to running fast before you add more structure, volume, and intensity.

Here’s a guide when you are ready for more structure. This is just a guide, not a prescription. First, some explanations and terminology:

A speed workout consists of several elements.

• Work interval – the length (time or distance) of the hard effort.
• Rest interval – the length of the recovery/easy between work intervals.
• Speed/effort – how fast and/or hard of each interval.
• Volume – total amount of work intervals.

When people tell me they ran 400s in xx, for example, that raises several questions. The first is why – what are they trying to improve, what are they training for. The next questions are what was the rest interval and the total volume. You can tweak each element of the intervals to stress different systems of your body differently.

W:R – work to rest ratio, how much rest you take relative to the hard effort. This is in terms of time, not distance. Rest can mean easy jogging or walking around. 1:1 means the same rest and work; e.g., 3:00 hard, 3:00 easy. 1:2, e.g., 30 seconds hard, 1 minute easy; 5:1 means, e.g., 20 min hard, 4 minutes easy. In general, the longer the W, the bigger the W:R ratio. 3:00/3:00 means 3:00 hard, 3:00 easy.

“On the x:xx” means starting each new work interval on a specific time. E.g., 400s on the 3:30 means that if you run a 400 in 2:00, your rest (either walk or jog) would be 1:30.

Repeats – A specific type of interval often given as a number of repeats. E.g., 6×800 means 6 repeats of 800m hard with the appropriate rest interval between each repeat.

Sets – Sometimes a workout can be multiple sets, or groups of intervals. E.g., 3x 4×400 with 60-second rest between repeats and 3:00 rest between sets means: 4 repeats of 400s with 60-second rest, take a 3:00 rest, then repeat the “set” of 4×400 twice more with 3:00 rest between sets.

LT – Lactic Threshold (LT) is what legendary coach Jack Daniels calls “comfortably hard,” or about the effort you would use in a 1-hour race. Lactic is both a byproduct of metabolism and a fuel source, not the evil many have portrayed. You don’t need to know this precisely. Close enough is good enough. Even if you have determined this via testing, understand that your so-called precise LT is going to vary because of things like fitness, stress, hydration, weather, and terrain.

I will switch back-and-forth between time and distance. When I talk about distance, I’ll generally refer to them in terms of a track. Most tracks are 400 meters (m) around. 1-mile is 1609.344m, a little more than 4-laps, but I use 1-mile and 1600m interchangeably. Distances are often a proxy for time on the work part. In general, I prefer time based intervals, especially for the rest. Too much or too little rest can change the effectiveness of the workout. Time based enforces discipline whereas you can be lazy and take to long if your rest is by distance.

Short Sprints
The main goal of these are to develop a fast and powerful stride. You have to teach your body to run fast before it can race fast.

Such short, powerful efforts can be risky. I don’t recommend these for inexperienced runners and those returning from injury. Start with striders instead. Also, do these on hill to reduce the risk.

Striders – about 30-seconds hard with a near full recovery. W:R 1:2+ Striders are often done on a track where you sprint the straights (gradually build for the first half), then jog the curves. Do this 3-5 times. If you are going to be doing a hard workout, this is a great drill to do as the final part of warmup. It’s also good to do these at the end of an otherwise easy-moderate run.

Hill Sprints – Striders, but on hills. Go hard until your legs start to tighten up and your stride slows, then just a couple of strides more while maintaining form and stride rate. This typically occurs at about 30-seconds. Pushing past where your form and stride rate starts to break down is not helpful. Choose a hill that’s fairly steep but runnable (not too steep or rocky), if possible. I typically walk/jog down.

Embedded striders/pickups: As part of a longer run, do 3-5 striders/pickups every ~30 minutes. On trails, you can do this around the terrain where you go fast on flats, uphills and relatively smooth terrain, then easy on downhills and technical terrain.

Alactic Sprints – Very short, high output efforts utilizing the ATP and phosphocreatine stored in your muscles without using stored glycogen or fat. These sprints should be 6-10 seconds max, the amount of energy stored in your muscles. You need 1:00-1:30 between such high efforts to allow your muscles to replace the fuel used. W:R 1:6-10. This is not recommended for beginners.

Medium intervals
VO2Max intervals: 3-5 minutes hard at ~15-20 minute race effort. Beginners can start at 2-minutes hard, advanced runners up to 6-minutes. W:R 1:1 – 2:1; e.g., 3:00 hard, 3:00 easy; 4:00 hard, 2:00 easy. In general, keep the hard volume at 10-15 minutes for beginners (e.g., 4x 3:00/3:00), 20-25 minutes for most (e.g., 6x 4:00/4:00), 30-40 for advanced (e.g., 2x 3x 6:00/3:00 with 5:00 rest between sets).

Cruise Intervals: 10-20 minutes hard at LT. W:R 3-6:1; e.g., 12:00 hard, 3:00 easy. These are great for ½-full marathon training.

Steady efforts
Tempo: Longer runs at a steady effort. This might be a single, 30-45min (plus a warmup and cooldown) effort, at LT or MRP.

Progression: Longer runs that start easy, then increase in effort. These get you used to running at race effort when you’re tired. If you’re training for a marathon, this might be 1-hr at MRP + 2:00/mi. Then, over the next hour, 15-min each progressively faster at MRP + 1:30/mi, MRP +1:00/mi, MRP + 0:30, MRP.

You can be creative with structured workouts to add variety to make them more fun. For example

Ladder: A workout that increases, then decreases in distance; climbs up and down the ladder. For example: 200 – 400 – 600 – 800 – 600 – 400 – 200. In terms of time (minutes), this might be 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1.

Pyramid: A workout that decreases in distance but increases in sets. For example: 1×1600, 2×800, 4×400.

Partner 400s: One person runs a lap while the other rests, then switch.

What about ultras? For those, I recommend the short and hill sprints, and VO2Max intervals. The sprints build power and efficiency that translate well to ultras. VO2Max builds aerobic capacity which help you go faster at lower efforts. There’s not much need for LT intervals as you shouldn’t be stressing your lactic system much in ultras. However, they’re OK to do instead of VO2Max. High intensity workouts should be done fairly early in the training cycle for an ultra. Striders and hill sprints can be continued until the final taper.

If nothing else, just spend some time going faster and don’t worry too much about how you do it, as long as you don’t go too hard or too much. Variety makes you faster. Variety keeps the running fresh and fun.

Train smart. Have fun. Smile. See you on the trails (and roads).
Run Uphill Racing