I had a new idea for how to do my striders and Im curious what some other people think about it.
The idea is that I set up my watch to beep every 10 seconds, I start out with a jog and then I hit my watch and focus 100% on turnover for 10 seconds trying to get as many strides as I can in that 10 seconds, usually 18-19 (108-114 strides per minute.) Note that this is all counting only one leg, not both. Then when my watch beeps at 10 seconds I lengthen my strides and just do a regular stride for the next 10 seconds. The result is that my 10 second stride is done at a much higher turnover than what it usually is while doing regular striders. My belief is that this will help develope speed better.
The background for this idea comes from a combination of a couple differnt ideas. The first of which is from Jim Hunt, who coached me at UCDavis, who had us do repeats of 18 strides in 10 seconds, 36 strides in 20 sec, and 54 in 30. My problem with that is that I found the slower I ran (overall speed... stride length x turnover) the easier it was to hit the goal turnover rate because I could just use much shorter strides. I felt this really didnt benefit my speed development that much. Another contributing factor is what most people do and call striders where the focus is on extended stride length. This is most of what I have done throughout my running and Ive discovered that most of these strides are done at about 90 strides per minute (where as my new idea has me at close to 105). The other idea, that most closely resembles my idea, is that of doing 150 meter sprint-float-sprints where you sprint 50, float 50, sprint 50. The problem I had with that was that it wasnt quantitative enough and because there was supposed to be a higher gear at the end, turnover was forgotten while trying to float in the middle.
I'ld love to hear a discussion of these ideas. Thanks.
-Aaron