Does Length Really Matter?

The other day on my run, as I ran with Jesse in the baby jogger, I noticed that I was taking a lot shorter strides than I normally do. I also noticed that I was not nearly as tired and felt pretty good overall. I dropped Jesse back at he house and finished my run (6.6 miles total). I tried to keep the same stride as I finished. Result? A quicker run time than normal, less tired than normal, and less achy then normal after a 6 mile run. So that got me thinking, after all the many years that I have been running, have I been doing it wrong?

The first place I went was to Beginnertriathlete.com and placed a thread int he forums asking about running strides. See the post here. There are a lot of knowledgeable people on this site and they are available to share information that they have on triathlon subjects.

So if you did not follow the link, here is what I got from the thread. Do not over stride. Sounds simple, but I had to ask, what is over striding? and this is when I learned something new to me.

Over striding basically means to not land ahead of your center of gravity, or your feet should hit the ground when they are below your hips. So you pick up speed with a faster cadence, not a longer stride. This is something that does not come natural to me, so it is something I will be working on this off season.

The other night I went out and ran and completed 5 miles in 44 minutes using a shorter stride. I felt great and felt like I could have ran another 5 miles. So if you are not happy with your runs, look at your stride!