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Cadence 180 myth

timgrose
over 8 years ago
Often there is talk about running dynamics and what "research" has been done about it. Cadence is perhaps the most "basic" one of these metrics and you will probably find some articles saying you should aim for 180 cadence. Trouble is for what standard of runner? A 4 hour marathoner, a 3 hour marathoner or elite/sub elite runners well under 2:30 ?

Interesting then to peruse the Strava traces of the leading runners that uploaded to Strava for London Marathon today
https://www.strava.com/running-races/2017-london-marathon-2017
and on the first page - all sub-elite 2:28 or better runners.

The vast majority of this "top 20" are well above 180 and indeed many well into the 190s. I make the median of the top 20 average cadences 189 and average 188.

Thus, on this evidence, if you want run this fast a cadence more like 190 than 180 might be suggested.

If say you can one mile in 5:30 or quicker what would your cadence be? Mine would also be around 190.

Indeed the guy doing a 2:17 had an average cadence of 199 !

On the other side of the coin it is not that "simple" - 2 of these guys had cadence around 174 although one of them I know vaguely and has run a lot faster previously.

I do recall it was Daniels that was credited with the "180" but equally I think his exact observation was that no world class runners that he looked had a cadence of under 180. On this simple analysis, it seems his observation was pretty much spot on.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    I believe the goal should be to have each foot land underneath your centre-of-mass. This minimises the impact, which can be much larger when they land out in front of you, and otherwise put you at much higher risk for injury over time. A quicker cadence is something tangible a runner can focus on that "pulls in" your footfall and helps here.

    For most runners cadence correlates with pace, as it should. For me it's something like this: easy runs ~165-175spm, marathon pace ~180-190spm, intervals and sprints >200spm.

    I did a progression run yesterday which shows this nicely: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1693124545. I'm interested to see what other runners find.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    That activity is private but certainly my cadence follows a similar pattern of getting higher with increased speed. I note it is only gradual though. I might be at or just under 180 say at 8 min/mile pace but for short periods when can do somewhere around 4:00 pace might be 200. In other words doubling my speed only increases my cadence by about 20 spm.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    That activity is private


    Should be fixed now.

    I seem to remember a good blog post that illustrated all of this with various running data from a while back. Can't find it now.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    I am short (5' 5") and slow (1:34 half when healthy), but my cadence has always been 180+ for all but the easiest of runs. When I was starting out (1:40 HM) it was always 180+, then when I got a little faster (2.5 years later), I'd be around 176 for easy runs and 180+ spm for medium pace runs. Races at 1/2 marathon distance or less would be around 185-190 spm. My half PB was 188 spm, 30k PB was 182 spm and marathon PB 186 spm (all within a 5 month period).

    When sprinting or striding, I can get up to 200-220 spm for very brief periods of time (I can only tell by looking at my max cadence). My cadence never goes below 175 for any run unless I'm injured. But for 8 x 800m stamina intervals (say 3:04 average), I'd be around 187-192 spm.

    So realistically, my sustained cadence (when healthy) is between 176-192 spm. But all of that has been during marathon training (including training for a sub 3:20 marathon, which never happened due to injury). If I ever go below 176, I know I'm injured and it just doesn't feel good. Never trained for a miler race or anything, so I don't know how things would change if I ever trained for real speed.

    Don't really have any representative data from a single run, but that's my anecdotal experience just from looking at my historical data.

    I think shorter runners do need to look at 180 as a minimum, for sure.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    I believe the goal should be to have each foot land underneath your centre-of-mass. This minimises the impact, which can be much larger when they land out in front of you, and otherwise put you at much higher risk for injury over time. A quicker cadence is something tangible a runner can focus on that "pulls in" your footfall and helps here.

    For most runners cadence correlates with pace, as it should. For me it's something like this: easy runs ~165-175spm, marathon pace ~180-190spm, intervals and sprints >200spm.

    I did a progression run yesterday which shows this nicely: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1693124545. I'm interested to see what other runners find.


    Agree completely with your point about footfall and follow that religiously. Where we differ is I have the exact same cadence regardless of pace up to Threshold Pace. As I go past Threshold Pace then my cadence does increase slightly. I am also almost exactly at 180 SPM although I never trained to that cadence exactly, just trained for high cadence generally, foot under center of mass landing and pulling foot back as opposed to over striding.

    Tim, I am not sure you can learn anything from race performances in general, except from the Elites, who are performing near their optimal. Other runners we cannot know if higher cadence would result in better performance or not.

    As you have a Stryd you can test yourself at different cadences and paces and calculate your RE for each and see what the result is. The main issue you may run in to is if it is far from your normal cadence then you may alter other aspects of your running (arm swing for example) that may cause you to have a reduced RE compared to if you trained at the new cadence. There was just a guy on the Stryd FB group who tested himself and thought higher cadence was worse for him, but when I calculated his RE at 2 cadences at the same pace, the higher cadence actually had a slightly higher RE.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    > Tim, I am not sure you can learn anything from race performances in general, except from the Elites, who are performing near their optimal. Other runners we cannot know if higher cadence would result in better performance or not.

    Well, on that, we can't actually infer what is anybody's best cadence as only got this one example. My point was that many runners who run these impressive times achieve it with relatively high cadence.

    what does this say for anybody in general - that is more tricky. If you are a 4 hour plus marathoner I suspect it would be inefficient to have a cadence of 190 as would mean a very short stride length.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    Or might contribute to you not being a 4 hour+ marathoner ;)
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    This has always been very interesting to me. I tend to not pay much attention to the cadence but I do notice I tend to have a faster cadence and feel more efficient when I am running at a faster pace. I ran a 15k in March and my fastest split at the end had my highest cadence, which was 15spm less than your highest cadence in your posted activity. I am 6'3" tall and 230lbs though so I tend to take much longer strides in general. The final split had a 163 Avg. cadence and a 1.38m average stride length.... lol. I have had a running form analysis and I have good form with a mid-sole strike right under my body. Here is the link to my activity for your perusal https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1629415884
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    oh, and the big gap in pace at the beginning of the race was a port-a-pottie stop
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    Without some type of comparative analysis at different paces looking at individual activities does not have a lot of meaning when trying to optimize running effectiveness. You would need a running power meter and to run at different cadences at multiple paces to develop a picture of where your optimized RE would fall. Looking at in individual activity there is no way to know if a higher cadence would have resulted in an overall better performance or not.