NERunner0353 wrote:
Looks like I can run longer than I want to read wrote:
You are over complicating things.
Sign up for your ultra of your choice. Do a weekly mileage between 30-80mpw (your choice if you can run that much) , do some longer runs and do some specific training for that race you signed up for. Taper a week or two and then just race it and see what happens.
After that you learn from your experience and you improve your process.
After 30+ years of ultrarunning I still would not know what "more ultra specific stuff" is. It's all running.
If you're not a troll OP, this is really good advice. Mileage up to what you can handle & workouts at threshold/marathon-pace for the most part. If that 160 cadence is right, maybe see someone about your form. You'll want that to be 180ish.
I said before that I'm operating in good faith. I would say, however, that accepting convention or vagaries (a 50mpw differential between weekly mileage recommendations lol) isn't required of me.
To your note about cadence: the 180 spm rarely takes into account the amount of effort expended or biomechanical efficiency sacrificed at a lower pace to achieve the same rate of turnover.
I'm at the tall end of 5'11". My stride length at ~ 8:00 mile pace is not long at 165 spm. It's even shorter at a higher rate of stride. Not only do I look like a buffoon, but I sacrifice too much of what feels natural in my form in order to be comfortable at a higher stride rate. I have had people look at my form somewhat recently, and the main complaints are actually regarding foot/ankle/lower leg posture, very little to do with stride rate. I pronate excessively, which is likely to be an issue later on in training. I've had a history with foot and lower leg injuries, so I would stick around to take credit if I fail as the first person to mention the cause, if albeit a bit tangentially.
However, just for you, I'll throw in a more reasonable km tomorrow on the track at the end of my run to see what 180spm looks like in the data, and feels like in hindsight. I'm sure we'll want more data, so, I'll propose the next bit as a follow-on experiment:
Within the current plan, I have two days of 6.5km easy planned before my next rest day. Following the rest day, I'll have a set of three 6.5km easy days. For those five days, I'll throw in a full km at the end of the run at 180spm (or as close as I can hold, I'm a bit out of practice with the quicker stuff). At the end of this, we should be able to anecdotally determine whether or not 180spm is 1) a sound course of action, 2) applicable in this use case for this specific mileage (along with the stated intent of the training session), and 3) a sound metric to drive a discussion about form. I think, for easy mileage in someone with long legs, that it ends up making more sense to sacrifice smaller portions of efficiency from both stride length and rate, as opposed to making significant concessions in one metric. These two, smaller, and more manageable accessions make easy days and rest days (like today) less damaging on both systems instead of more significantly damaging to the one.
Sure, if I'm racing a mile on a track I'll be running around 185 spm. Because in that context it makes sense to operate at peak efficiency. I've never been able to see how people get over the logical leap with cadence, where peak efficiency isn't necessary or attainable on a day to day basis.
Like the old man said, I don't want to over complicate things. While he, and no one else, has offered why overcomplicating things is an issue, just that it is.