rekrunner wrote:
How does it help to look at stride lengths, rather than something like race times? Maybe it would help me to see where you want to go with this alternate viewpoint.
It's easy to increase stride length, and decrease stride rate, and end up with a slower time. (We call this overstriding).
It's easy to increase stride length, by cutting the race distance in half.
What you are really saying, is that stride lengths will get longer, without decreasing stride rates, or compromising the endurance to complete the race distance, presumably with the right training approach, and without drugs.
Assuming we just set a PR, and that stride rates remain fairly constant for an athlete, then it becomes a meaningless tautology. Times will get faster, because times will get faster. It's too obvious to be controversial, yet few people express it.
What's the consequence of changing perspectives? The next step is to see how that affects your approach to training. Does anything change? If not, then what's the value added of measuring stride lengths, and stride rates, versus simply looking at race times? If so, then what?