WFR #3: Short Strides | Wed 10th Dec, 7:30pm | Prospect Park Weekly Form Run

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When: Every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. (run leaves at 7:37 abouts).

Where: Find The Big Red Pointer(TM) (center of the map, click here).

Distance: A single figure 8 lap of Prospect Park, ~4.6139 miles.

Optional Distance Sub-group: 3 miles or less if that's helpful (please let Run Leaders know).

Today's Direction:  Left as you face the park at startup.

Pace: Welcome to all. Fun.

AQI: We're monitoring Air Quality Index here and have been asked to not run if the local index exceeds 125.

New Stuff:

I dragged this week's bubble ("Short Strides") to the top of the topics hierarchy and gave it a good shake. The result was this diagram. "Short Strides" is mutually supported by, and aids "Bended Knee", "Avoiding Kneesles", "Breathing", "Forward Tilt" and "Quiet Feet". "Short Strides" enhances "Hips", "Suppressing Head Bob", "Passive Stride Recovery", and "Ground Contact" and is supported by "Arm Swing".

Just in case you'd like to explore, here's a pretty QR Code for Week #19:

Towards the end of Week #19 Notes (below "The Mantra"TM) there are links to all the WFR weekly topics.

This week's focus: Short Strides (injury prevention, endurance - week 3) 

TL;DR: Baby Steps!

Reducing stride length by 10% should reduce the risk of suffering a tibial stress fracture. As you can see, according to Google, the tibia is near the left eyebrow (not!).

It reduces loading of joints - though if you have glaucoma, you get a pass, and it's now legal in Washington. But really, the benefits of reducing strain with stride length manipulation outweigh the detriments of increased loading cycles associated with a given mileage. Especially beneficial for HIGH MILEAGE! And good for the knees and hips since it takes the load off them as well. I hear a lot of talk about stress fractures, so this might be something to try.

*Dr. B Edwards, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2009 study, Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise

Ever try taking monster strides only to realize you're just not going as far or as fast as you thought or you wanted? Like you thought that if you could only move in life in giant leaps, you'd reach great things - but in reality you just found yourself exhausted, spent, falling behind, and perhaps injured - or even off course? Of course! We've all been there. 

What you really need to concentrate on are baby steps: 

It's OK to kind of just shuffle along. Taking more steps at the same pace helps reduce injury - tibial stress fractures mainly - and potentially increase speed once you've got it down. Sure you look like you're shuffling, but eventually you're going faster than everyone else and injuring yourself less. The optimal number of strides per minute is depends on the individual. 90 strides or 180 steps/minute has been mentioned as a good ratio in recent years.

The problem with 180 strides per minute is that that's probably not sustainable. 

So just keep your strides short. This post explains how all good runners can really pump up their strides per minute. One good excerpt: "'Fitter people have a little longer stride, but the rate stays the same,' said Jack Daniels, coach, exercise physiologist and author of the seminal book Daniels’ Running Formula, which first included analysis of stride rate."

The basic idea of reducing your stride length and speeding up your turnover is the source of many debates. Generally the faster you go, the higher your turnover, but if you try and work on high turnover while running slowly, that can increase your turnover without reducing your stride length too much, likely increasing your speed without injury, actually almost certainly. 

This form is not advice if you want to look like a track star: "Elite sprinters don't swing their legs any faster than recreational runners," says Dr Sam Allen of Loughborough University. Instead, the difference is that a top sprinter takes longer and more powerful strides. Research shows that an amateur runner often takes between 50 and 55 steps to complete 100m, while an elite sprinter takes in the region of 45.

We're looking for something more like this (he even demonstrates "Forward Tilt"): 

Related WFR Topics

"Head Bob" #1 (bubbles), "Bended Knee" #2 (bubbles), "Arm Swing" #4 (bubbles), "Quiet Feet" #6 (bubbles), "Ground Contact" #7 (bubbles), "Forward Tilt" #8 (bubbles), "Hips" #9 (bubbles), "Breathing" #11 (bubbles), "Passive Stride Recovery" #12 (bubbles), "Avoid Kneesles" #15 (bubbles).

Reading Bubble Diagrams:

Bubbles in the pictures are individually linked to the most recent notes. They are now no longer pictures (hooray), they're auto-generated scalable vector drawings.

Topics are related to each other. Some more or less directly than others. Bubble Diagrams (e.g. this week's topic bubble diagram) illustrate how they are related. Bubbles nearest the top are more directly related to this week's topic. The path to the top illustrates a chain of related topics. Topic bubbles are expanded once in their highest position (most closely related to this week's topic) and are colored blue (or colored black if this is a topic's only appearance). Duplicated bubbles are colored green, which is no less important than a blue colored bubble at the same vertical distance from the root.

Lines that join topic bubbles have been colored. Blue connecting lines illustrate a child topic (lower) supported by its parent topic (upper... think waterfall). Purple connecting lines illustrate the child topic supporting its parent topic. Black connecting lines indicate bi-directional (mutual) topic support. Lightly colored connecting lines indicate topics that are pulled out of the way, as the level they occupy is too crowded. One day 3D (AV) will allow us to walk through bubble diagrams (like tinkling mobiles hanging from your ceilings) and currently lightly-connected bubbles will just be viewable at a different angle (by spinning the view) and not colored differently. One Day... ahhh... One Day.

📢 ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢

After a decade of gripes about the google group and some beta testing on what works (threaded conversations, a few dedicated channels) and doesn't work (not using real names!) with Discord last year, the club is starting the process of transferring updates and discussion to an app purpose built for running clubs called Heylo. We have been testing it amongst the coordinators and run leaders for a few months and are now ready to invite the rest of the club in. Please join -  https://www.heylo.com/invite/16fd83bd-91aa-468d-9cb6-c817a98e219f

📢 Weekly Daddy Joke 📢 

Q: What do you call a free treadmill?

A: Outside.