It often amazes me, what random thoughts can pop into my head while running.  I spent half an hour pondering just one thing, during my run this afternoon.

While running at the local park, my thoughts started to wander, and I thought about a photograph of me in the finishing chute at Ironman 70.3 Oceanside last weekend. It is the photograph that I chose for today’s blog.

What popped into my mind was the fact that I am about to heel strike in that photograph.  Heel striking is not necessarily a bad thing, provided the point where your foot hits the ground, is under your body. I am pretty sure my contact with the ground is going to be good in that photograph. While thinking about this heel strike dilemma however, a question occurred to me….

Would increasing my run cadence help me run faster, and maybe also reduce my tendency to heel strike?

I tried thinking logically to answer my question.  At its very core, run speed is simply “distance per stride x run cadence”.  Sure there are other factors like wind speed and aerobic drag, but fundamentally keeping my distance per stride the same and increasing my cadence, would indeed help me go faster. It sounded simple, but then my mind went down the rabbit hole!

• Increasing cadence should make me go faster but how does it impact endurance?  Would I get tired more easily? What about my heart rate; would it increase? Would I use more energy?
• What if I increased cadence, reduced my distance per stride slightly, and ran at the same pace?  Would this be more efficient? Would this eliminate my heel strike and reduce the impact on my legs? 
• All the world class runners I watch have a much higher cadence than me.  Surely that is a sign I need a higher cadence. I typically run with a cadence of 165 steps per minute; what if that was 180?

My run ended before I came to any conclusions, and maybe that is a good thing.  Changing run mechanics is hard and runs the risk of injury. 

What random thoughts have you had on a run recently?