Every Race is an Adventure!

Hey Paul how do you do the striders? Do you just take off for 20-30 seconds then rest about that long and repeat this for however many striders you are doing? Did you do them at the end of the run or in the middle somewhere? If I remember correctly these should be around 5K pace, does that sound right?

I'm wanting to start adding these as well to easy runs. One thing I notice on easy runs is afterward when I do my light stretches I'm still pretty tight whereas after the tempos and faster runs I'm loose and can get a real good stretch afterward. I'm hoping throwing in some striders will help loosen up the legs a bit on the easy days.

You should probably ask someone else for how striders are supposed to be done. The ones I did this morning weren't very regular or scientific. I did some of them about 30 seconds apart. A few of them I just threw in at random spots where I felt like it.

Here's the math that went through my head as I was running this morning (use at your own risk): As maybe you know, I tend to like to count 1-2-3 1-2-3 when I'm running fast (it helps me keep my feet moving), and at 180 steps/minute that works out to be about 1 second per 1-2-3. I roughly estimated that 60 seconds for one lap (400 meters) was pretty fast (4:00 mile). So to approximate/simulate running 100 meters at 4:00/mi pace I simply ran as fast as I could (focusing on form and efficiency) for 15 1-2-3's (45 steps). I suspect it's somewhat short of 100 meters since I'm probably not running 4:00/mi pace, and my stride rate may have been slightly faster than 180/minute. I'll have to go to the track and find out. I'd prefer counting steps to having to look at my watch, or set it to beep, every 20 or 30 seconds while doing striders.

Sasha has Sasha Science. Maybe I can call my ideas Paul Postulation or Paul Postulates. (A postulate is something taken as being true or factual and used as a starting point for a course of action or reasoning.)

They should be no more than 20 seconds. If you do not want to look at your watch, just go fast, with a good knee lift, and feel like you are rolling along, and go until you stop enjoying the speed. Make sure to give yourself enough rest in between.

The idea behind those is to teach your body proper form while running fast, and then carry the momentum of muscle memory into running slow, so the better form while running fast begins to influence your form while running slow. It is also important to keep the strides short enough that you do not have excessive amounts of oxygen debt.

Thanks, Sasha. I like to understand the principle behind the practice.