What is cadence and why should I care?

Many watches have a cadence meter on them. Cadence simply means how many times your feet hit the ground in one minute. You also may have heard or read about stride and turning over your feet quicker. You may not have paid attention to it but it's something that can make a huge difference in your running and help prevent getting any serious injuries. 

For my first year of running I was constantly heel striking and trying to elongate my stride. I thought that having a wider stride meant that I would cover more ground faster. Of course I was wrong. Fortunately for me, I didn't have any major injuries that stopped me from running. I did, however, have some minor knee problems and my body would always take hours to recover from a run. Walking up the stairs was never fun. 

It wasn't until I was on Youtube one day looking for running drills that I saw a video highlighting the mistakes of newbies. The main mistake that was addressed was heel striking. What!? You mean to tell me that I've been running with incorrect form this entire time!? I had to fix it. So I gave myself an entire month to work on my form and essentially "teach" myself how to run.

An ideal cadence should be 180 which means that both feet hit the ground 180 times in one minute. Most elite athletes have this cadence. I haven't been dead on or over that number but it's a good reference point to shoot for when I'm running. Non-elite runners can shoot for somewhere between 160 and 170. Of course my height, weight and leg length are factors for the cadence I should have. My numbers were originally in the lower 150's and even upper 140's. Ouch! That simply means I was not efficiently running and put more strain on my legs than was necessary. 

Just imagine though that my foot hit the ground much further out in front of me.

Extending my leading foot out far in front of me caused my body to work against itself in trying to move forward. I was essentially breaking every time my foot hit the ground which meant my body had to work harder to run. I didn't notice how counterproductive this was until I changed up my stride.

Disregard my back leg, that's not how it looks when I'm actually running.

Now with my foot under my center or gravity and the weight being more on the front to middle of my foot my body naturally propelled itself forward. I mean just look at the above picture and you'll notice that my calf muscle is in full action. By shortening my stride and placing my weight in the front of my foot I put much less strain on my legs, enabling me to keep a faster pace without burning out quicker. 

When I first started running this way I felt like those cartoons where the character starts running in place and then takes off. It took a while to adjust but once I did my knees no longer bothered me and my recovery time went down to mere minutes rather than hours. My average cadence now is somewhere between 167 and 172. There have been a couple of magical days when I hit 177! I was in a groove on those days.

There are so many things that you don't realize can affect your running until you actually start running. 

What are some things that have affected your running? 

Did you correct it?

Were you better off than you were before or was your old way better?