180 Steps Per Minute

An article in the latest Runner's World mentioned that all elite runners who compete at distances from 5K to marathon run at a cadence of about 180 steps per minute.  Interesting.

Today on the treadmill I tried this out - an easy method is to count just my left foot for six seconds, then multiply by 20; e.g. if my left foot strikes nine times in six seconds, that's 180 spm (steps per minute).  Warming up at a 9:00 pace my cadence was 140 spm.  I upped it to 180 but that didn't feel right; maybe 9:00 is too slow for my long legs.

I bumped it up to an 8:00 pace and settled into about 160 spm.  Then I upped it to 180 spm and sure enough, it felt pretty good - quick, but easy.  However, my plan for the day was speedwork so after five minutes of warming up, I throttled up to a 6:00 pace.  I maintained it for six minutes - that means I ran a six-minute mile in the middle of a workout!  Yep, cool beans.

What I noticed was that to run that fast, I was striding at 180 spm without even thinking about it.  In fact, anything 7:30 pace and faster and I was naturally doing 180 spm.  After recovering a bit, I then tried a 5:30 pace.  I only held that for two minutes but I found myself striding 190-200 spm - perhaps that means that a 5:30 pace is too fast for me to run aerobically?  Such a fast turnover probably uses too much of my inefficient fast-twitch muscles.

Slowing back down to an 8:00 pace, without thinking I settled into a 180 spm rhythm so I think my legs like that cadence once they've locked into it.  It truly did feel comfortable.  I still couldn't maintain that turnover at 9:00 pace, though, but I was doing 150-160 as opposed to the initial 140. 

One amazing thing about running that 5:30 pace...  after I slowed back down to 9:00 pace, it felt so agonizingly slow that I sped it up to 8:30... then 8:00, then 7:45, then 7:30 and it still felt slow.  A 7:30 pace is supposed to be fast for me, but at that moment it actually felt easy.  I knew it wouldn't last long, but I was enjoying the feeling so much that I kicked it up to a 6:30 pace and even that felt somewhat comfortable for the three minutes that I held it.  So if you want to feel fast for a brief amount of time, run REALLY hard for a couple minutes then run slow for a couple to recover a bit then speed it up and that medium-fast speed will feel relatively easy for a while.  I wonder if that's how elite runners feel when they're running 3-hour marathons at a 6:30 pace?