
It’s that time again! Your chance to ask me anything you would like. As I always mention, this is always one of my favorite things to do. Apparently, you like it also because the private feedback I got 6 months ago was clearly in favor of doing this twice a year.
Almost nothing is off limits. Feel free to ask me about training, racing, what’s going on at HillRunner.com, or anything else. This is my invitation to you to ask whatever you would like.
As usual, you can reach out to me however you feel most comfortable. If you want to ask something publicly, you can do so in the comments or on Facebook. If you want to ask in a more private setting, you can use the contact form or, if you are friends with me on Facebook or know my email, you can reach me through those methods.
As I have done in the past, I’d like to ask you a question also. This time, I’d like to ask how I can make HillRunner.com better and more valuable for you. What can I do in 2025 to help you become a better runner? More tools? Specific topics to cover in blog posts? Something else? Name it and you might get it. I always appreciate any feedback and you can feel free to use the same contact methods above, whether you want to answer my question publicly or privately.
Are high school boys and girls trained the same way for cross-country season?
Double, good questions and I’m finding out I need to really prioritize making this post in the first week of December. Apologies for the delay in responding.
I’m going to respond to each of these individually. First:
At Slinger, they are. I don’t know about other schools. It seems like a lot of schools we see have separate teams with separate coaching staffs. At Slinger, though, one coaching staff works with the combined team and the girls and boys will even be together in workout groups based on ability.
Is there evidence 180 steps per minute is optimal versus one’s natural running gait? If so, in what way?
Great question and such a popular topic of question and debate. There are several studies on this topic. Unfortunately, I can’t find the one I’d like to discuss but I’ll share it if I can find it later. In short, the study found that one’s ideal stride to maximize running efficiency tends to be slightly faster than what one normally settles into. So, if you naturally fall into a cadence of 170, your ideal cadence might be 172-175. However, the gain was so insignificant that it is probably not worthwhile for most people to focus on this. Just doing what comes naturally is so close to ideal that the gains would be minimal. As for this discussion, 180 was not ideal for most people and would actually be less efficient than what one naturally settles into.
As for what the best do, in a distance that might be of interest to you, runners at the 100K World Championships in 2016 across a population of 20 runners averaged 182 steps per minute. However, the individual runners varied from less than 160 steps per minute to over 200 steps per minute. Essentially, everyone found what worked for them.
In short, what you settle into naturally is probably more ideal than targeting 180, unless what you settle into normally is something like 175. Then, 180 might be a little better but the gain is so little it’s probably not worth the effort.
Are more people trying to figure out running on their own, or is the trend of having to find out about everything from other sources continuing to grow?
Good question. From my observations, I would say there is more information readily available and more people are looking at that information. So I do think there is more seeking of information.
The issue is that there is a lot of bad information readily available. I browse social media and there is a lot of bad advice and information out there. I recently shared some advice on social media saying make sure you know where you’re getting your advice and information from. Make sure you are getting it from someone with credible knowledge and experience. Trust nobody, including myself, without learning about them, their experience, their knowledge of verifiable facts, and to a certain extent their credentials. I say to an extent when it comes to credentials because you can get some impressive sounding credentials with little education and proof of deep knowledge. I know because I’ve done it.
Thanks Ryan. Always good to read your thoughts. I think if runners could get out an hour per day a lot of knowledge would come rolling their way.