Foggy 5K

[JoolieB1]

My hair was wet and my eyelashes too plus my glasses steamed up, lovely autumn run in the fallen leaves. Trying to run 5K X 3 times a week as I graduated 6 weeks ago now. Looking after my legs by not pushing myself too hard. Any tips on increasing speed slightly - longer stride, shorter quicker ones - what will work without damaging my legs?

[Qscout Graduate]

I personally would go with slightly longer stride. Workrate isnt increased too much, but you are covering greater distance with each stride. I just have it in my head that shorter quicker ones will use more energy.

No scientific basis on this one, other than anyone professional s on tv arent shuffling along with legs a blur.

[JoolieB1 Graduate in reply to Qscout]

That makes sense, I will try to extend my stride on my next run, you are right that doing small strides more would seem to take more energy. I am reasonably happy with my 5K times - 34 mins to 38 mins depending on the day and the surface but even taking a couple of minutes off would be good. I did 34 at parkrun, that was fear + adrenaline LOL

[Ugifer]

What a lovely looking run!

If you stride longer, be careful not to over-do it. You always want to be striking the ground under your body rather than out in front otherwise the impact on your legs is greater. You should aim to land on the mid-foot rather than the heel to avoid too much shock to your joints.

Although harder work, running at a higher "cadence" is safer than running with longer strides. The trick overall is to not increase anything too fast and to be aware of any discomfort before it progresses to injury. As always, your body is great at adapting if you give it time to do so.

Well done keeping up the running - if you carry on incrementing gradually then hopefully you will continue to enjoy running for a long time to come.

Ugi

[MarkyD Graduate]

I'm with Ugifer, careful with deliberately increasing your stride length. To run faster, increase your cadence.

Set a 1 minute countdown timer on your phone, and count the numbers of steps that you take during the minute (each time a foot hits the ground, that counts as one step, or just count your right foot then double the number you get). That will give you your current cadence.

On your next run, once you've warmed up, try running with 10 added to the cadence you measured before. It's quite hard, and so you'll need a metronome app, or to find some music with the right beat. (You are a genius if you can count steps for one minute and concentrate of increasing your cadence.)

I said this before some time ago.

Imagine that you are a child, playing in a wood. You find a small branch, and you want to break it in half. What do you do?? You hold the branch at one end, and bang the other end of the branch on the ground. You keep doing it until the branch splinters and breaks in the middle.

The branch is your leg when you are running.

If you over-stride, you can damage your legs, and you may find yourself getting shin splints, or stress fractures. Short, fast, quiet steps are safest for most of us. Leave the long strides for gazelles, Mo Farah and Jo Pavey.

[AncientMum Graduate in reply to MarkyD]

Great advice Mark.

[davelinks Graduate]

Let the speed come naturally in time, that's not a bad time your on now for a new runner, why the hurry?

[JoolieB1 Graduate]

I am mostly satisfied with my speed and distance. It's just things such as parkrun (wanting to improve on my personal best) and running club (not wanting to be the slowest) I guess that makes me want to just up my speed a little. More impressed with distance increasing but that can wait for now.

[AncientMum Graduate]

Personally, I'd go back and do w1 again, but run fast in the run bits and jog slowly in the walk bits. Interval training courtesy Laura, what's not to like?

[IannodaTruffe Mentor]

As the others say, at this stage don't increase stride length, it is a fast track to injury.

You are doing the best thing for your running by consolidating at the moment. Speed will come in time and I think that increasing your distance gradually, for one run per week, is the best way. It not only continues to improve your cardiovascular system but it also gets you over the psychological hump of 5k being the maximum distance that you can run, so that you may even have something left in the tank when you get to the last half k of your parkrun.

[Sharonb9999 Graduate]

Have you tried the speed podcast? Short bursts of fast running with recovery in between and Laura coaching you along the way. About 20 minutes all together I think. I've managed to get my pace up from really slow to slow using this and random interval running every so often.

[laurav33 Graduate]

Well done for getting out there three times! I'm managing two. One in the week plus park run. I don't think I could do a longer stride, I'm only just 5ft tall so I feel like I have a v short stride!! Hehe

[JoolieB1 Graduate in reply to laurav33]

I tried extending my stride, didn't do my knees any good so going back to my stumbling shuffle, it works for me!!

[Curlygurly2 Graduate]

I agree with most of the advice here, higher cadence not longer strides... Speed is good, as is Stamina, and as AM says Week 1 run as intervals...a longer run now and again will make you faster on the shorter ones too... mix it all up, that's the way!

[Qscout Graduate]

After reading the replies I would like to clarify that in my case I am no where near full stride. When I said increase stride I was basing it on my own when I started running my stride was about a foot and a half. I extended it to about 2 and a half foot and speed increased.