My cadence at 8 mph and 12 mph is the same, on a treadmill

Apologies, I see this has been exhaustively covered on another thread:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=149099&page=0

I really enjoyed that other thread, BTW.

That's why I really don't like running on them. Like you said, you can be running the same cadence at a slower pace and also a faster one. Happens to me.

This is normal. In Daniels' Running Formula (the first one) there is a section in the book when he discusses stride rates. If I remember right, he did a study at the '92 Olympics in which is counting stride rates of athletes in every race from 800m through the marathon.

He found that the 800m runners had the highest stride rate, followed by the 1500m runners who had the next highest stride rate. No surprise there. What was surprising was that athletes running the 3k through the marathon all had very similar strides rates at about 180 strides/min. The difference was the stride lengths of the athletes. Athletes running the 3k covered more ground with each stride than the athletes running the marathon.

What is a typical cadence for a 100m sprinter? A 400m sprinter?

It takes Bolt 41-42 strides (when he's running 9.6 sec). Most elite 100m sprinters (~10 sec) take 44-45 strides.

Bolt = 250 to 260 strides per minute

Other elites = 270 strides per minute

Bolt is 6'5" and covers much more ground per stride than someone who is 5'9"

As Jack Daniels noted in the other thread, that range of cadence is fairly typical for a good runner.

In terms of whether cadence stays the same at different paces, it's most common for both cadence and stride length to increase as you get faster. Here's some recent data from Robert Chapman's elite group in Indiana:

http://sweatscience.com/cadence-in-elite-runners-increases-as-they-accelerate/

You'll notice over the range tested, their cadence increases by more than 20 steps per minute.

There's also some very cool data from the 2007 World Champs 10,000 that shows stride length and cadence for the three medalists:

http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2010/11/speed-stride-length-x-stride-frequency.html

You'll notice that Bekele dramatically increases cadence in his last-lap kick, whereas Mathathi actually reduces his cadence.

aroundtheworld wrote:

That's why I really don't like running on them. Like you said, you can be running the same cadence at a slower pace and also a faster one. Happens to me.

Me either. Just more proof that running on a treadmill is totally different than real running because YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUILD UP ANY MOMENTUM.

Thanks, hold the phone.

This is really interesting data, and makes me think twice about what I've taken as gospel, that pretty much all elites from 3000-42195 stride at 90-95 per minute, regardless of speed.

Always good stuff from you!

Con Man wrote:

Me either. Just more proof that running on a treadmill is totally different than real running because YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUILD UP ANY MOMENTUM.

But you have to do the same amount of work to keep your momentum, as the treadmill is forcing you in the opposite direction. The physics are exactly the same as running on a flat road, except for you don't have air resistance.

You don't like treadmill running because it's boring, just be honest about it instead of BSing us with physics terms you don't know