Fatigue and running faster

At the six-week mark, I am adjusting to the `challenge' of ironman training. It's an opportunity to refocus on my form, which goes straight out the window as fatigue sets in.

At least now I can recognize fatigue earlier and I can cut myself a bit of slack so I don't - in this case - fly off the treadmill!

I had an interesting discussion this past week with Coach Kristian about run cadence and the 96 target that lies ahead of me - months ahead.

Here's the ironguide line on run cadence:

"The 96 stride rate we suggest you run at in training is to ensure that each person, no matter who, focuses on increasing their stride rate during run training.

As a rough estimate, I'd say about 90% of AG athletes neglect to focus on training stride rate, and most run well under 90 steps per leg per minute. 96 is not an arbitrary number and it is important to understand that this is a training target, intended to be followed consistently over time, in order to assist you in learning to run with a higher stride - but not necessarily always at 96!

It's a great target to "aim" for in training because you can count it easily, and low to mid-90's is a good target for racing.

In most cases, you will not be able to hold pace, rate or exertion levels late in a race as what you held in training sessions, but by race day you should have "programmed your red meat computer" to run at a higher stride rate.

96 is the target in training, you'll probably hit a little lower in racing, but because you have trained this way, it'll come more naturally and you will focus on it, rather than running at "any old" stride rate, which when we are tired and depleted tends towards "trudging aka the Ironman Shuffle."

And besides - 96 divides by 6, 4, and 3, meaning you can easily track the consistency of your strides per leg per minute over 10, 15 or 20 seconds at a time (ie multiply strides per 10sec x 6 and you get your rate/minute)."

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What I take from this advice is that I need to speed my foot turnover. And I have some work to do.

During my long run a few days ago, I was running a cadence between 80 and 89.