Anarchocyclist

I was just reading this great book on triathlon training (”The Triathlete’s Training Bible”, by Joe Friel), and it has a lot of technique tips for all 3 sports. I was particularly interested in the running section the other day, and i discovered that my running style is horribly inefficient.

One of the first things i noticed was the explanation about excessive vertical oscillation. A great way to waste energy is to really bounce up and down during your stride. I realized right away that i do this a lot, so i’m effectively wasting all sorts of energy uselessly lifting my body in every step.

Another one was the spot where your foot hits. I tend to take long strides and land on my heels. Friel explains in the book that if you’re doing this, then every stride is slowing you down. Your feet are landing way in front of your center of gravity and that causes some backward force, which wastes energy. Energy is also wasted in the rolling action of your foot, from heel to toe. He sites a study of elite runners in which it was discovered that 60% of them land on their forefoot, 30% mid-foot, and only 10% on their heel. They described their running experience as feeling like they were just moving their feet vertically instead of consciously trying to stride far ahead.

What they were doing is lifting their feet high to enable a quick pace, and then letting their feet strike near their body. By landing on a part of their foot nearer the front, they were gaining more spring from the muscles and tendons of the foot, and wasting less energy because they weren’t being pushed backwards on every step. My stride, in contrast, involved having lots of spring from the previous step, which catapulted me vertically a lot, and then landing on the heel after a long stride, which wasted energy from the backwards force.

So, now i’m trying to switch things up a bit. I’m aiming for a 90bpm pace, which i’m achieving by listening to some appropriately paced music and stepping on the beats. I’m also trying to bounce less, and trying to land more on the middle of my feet. We’ll see how it works out ;)

Ride hard, ride free

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 14:57 pm and is filed under Front Page, triathlon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.