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| A perfect blue sky in Stamford. |
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| The rather cool surroundings of the Cosy Club. That guy's wearing my hoody which, thinking about it, I was wearing at the time. Embarrassing. |
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| Street cooked Thai noodles. Delicious. |
Having pootled around the shops, enjoyed coffee in the very comfortable Cosy Club, lunched on Thai food cooked before our eyes on a market stall, and sunbathed in the landscaped grounds of Burghley it was time to get the Merrells out again. Following the pattern of previous days I used my old Brooks for a warm up of a couple of miles, before slipping on the new shoes for just one mile. There was no sign of that upper foot pain from a few days ago (I told you it was just phantom runners' pain) but there was a new development. I became very aware on the second half mile (having stopped for a little walk around in the middle) that the little toe on my right foot was starting to complain. It was obviously rubbing, though I couldn't really work out why. At this stage, my instinct is to treat it like I do the tips of my fingers when I haven't played the guitar for a while. They complain a bit, but then they callous and get used to it. Time will tell if the same happens to my little toe.
I introduced a new feature to my training today - the 180bpm (beats per minute) cadence. I don't have the details to hand, but there has been some research which shows that the majority of elite runners, as well as usually forefoot striking, have a stride cadence within a remarkably similar range, at around 180bpm. There are exceptions to this, but it is surprisingly common. And it appears that when these elite runners slow down, or speed up, they still have the same cadence. It's the stride length that adjusts.
While some take this as gospel and therefore declare that the optimum running style must incorporate a 180bpm cadence, it should be noted that were I to try and accompany the likes of Mo or Paula on a 'jog', I'd find I was putting in some considerable effort. Whatever their activity at the time, they still cover the ground pretty quickly. Definitely by an average club runner's standards. So some argue that this cadence is not realistic for ordinary runners. However, most barefoot enthusiasts have observed that their cadence naturally increases when they run without the padding of traditional shoes. The brain responds to the feel of the landing and finds the optimum stride frequency which results in the least impact on the sole of the foot. And it seems that this somewhat quicker cadence often heads in the direction of 180bpm.
One way to adjust your running form is to deliberately increase your cadence. It's virtually impossible to keep the same gait if you do this. You have to adjust your body angle, and change where your centre of gravity sits relative to impact. And you almost can't help but forefoot strike. So I gave it a go. And the simplest way to do this was to use music. Find tracks at the tempo you want, put them on your iPod and set off.
In order to choose some tracks I used two tools available on the internet. The first is jog.fm where a seemingly vast number of songs are catalogued according to bpm. It's very useful, but it is also a bit odd. The songs are not simply listed by tempo, but also by what is best for a certain mile-time (you have to change between metric and imperial at the top of the screen). Quite what makes one song better than another for a particular speed of running I don't know. I can only assume it is to do with the length of the song. But who on earth times their miles using songs? Anyway, if you're willing to hunt a bit, you can find a big list of songs with the tempo you want.
But this may not help much if it doesn't cover the songs you actually own, which was largely the case for me. So I also used Beatunes, a free utility, that analysed my iTunes library, and came up with a list of songs. It wasn't fool-proof, throwing in one or two songs that clearly where not in the right range, but it was still pretty useful. So, on this glorious spring day, I ran along to the sound of:
Piano Man by Billy Joel
Shine by Take That
Four Seasons in One Day by Crowded House
Thank You for Saving Me by Delirious
No doubt this selection tells you everything you need to know about my iTunes library. I suppose it probably is fairly representative, thought I'm a little ashamed that Take That has made it in there. But what is more interesting is what it did, or didn't do, to my running. I tried it with both pairs of shoes, to see how natural it felt.
With the Brooks it was almost impossible to keep up. I consciously tried to aim for my forefoot and get through my stride quickly, but it felt utterly unnatural. And I was constantly slipping behind the beat. I could just about do it, but it was a big effort, and I couldn't really see how it was helping. But when I switched to the barefoot shoes it was a completely different experience. It was as if my feet wanted to run in this tempo. Where, in the old shoes, I'd been aware of trying to swing the pendulum of my leg through quickly to match the song, I found my weightless feet easily and comfortably going through each rotation. And it was much easier than my first two runs to maintain a forefoot strike.
It's going to take some time, I'm sure, before I get this tempo and this style into my system such that it would feel natural in other shoes. But on the basis of one mile, it can surely be done. It may be that I eventually find my own perfect cadence is not bang on 180bpm but, while I am learning and consciously trying to change, it seems sensibly to go with the recommendation. Now I'm really looking forward to trying it again in a couple of days, even with Gary Barlow and friends keeping me company.
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