Hi - do any of you train running in order to “glide” at a long distance triathlon? Would love to hear your experiences and thoughts! And if you then train and run this way in shorter races, triathlon, running etc.
Upright body, feet well in front, little vertical movement and high cadence is favoured by Brett Sutton (trainer of Daniela Ryf and Chrissie Wellington) and I saw it recently from Jesper Svensson when he came second in Roth - watch him at an earlier race here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jeNW59ojis. (Note how he passes many decent age-groupers who try to run in a traditional way) Contrast with Mirinda Carfrae, Patrick Lange and now Cam Wurf who led Peter early in the Roth but came third - a beautiful “classical” style that we all want to and are instructed to emulate.
Is the “ugly” style a possibly superior alternative for us age groupers whose legs are toast after the bike and are unable to uphold a more “bouncy” classical style and how do you train this?
Bouncing, or upward movement, no matter the cadence, is wasted energy. Watch any elite runner and their upper body is mostly stable. Most of the African runners have this down as second nature and usually comes with a higher cadence. For me, my vertical oscillation goes down with high speed, high cadence running. When I do regular 30 second stride ups, my overall running economy metrics tend to improve.
Upright body, feet well in front, little vertical movement and high cadence…
Not sure where you got the “feet well in front” part – his footstrike is pretty much right underneath his center of gravity. You can do a lot just by relaxing the lower legs and upping your cadence. See where that takes you. Then start thinking about NOT extending the lower leg forward.
I never understood the theory that age group racers come off the bike with toasted legs. If you train properly on the bike you should come off the bike with legs ready to run. But I would agree most age groupers aren’t fit.
I might be all wrong and we see different things - I see Jesper extending feet way forward his centre of mass and the difference between Chrissie and/or Dainella’s run compated to Mirinda’s. Can also refer to https://www.trisutto.com/...er-ironman-run-split and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJWPwVF30yo. To me this is a matter of style and a style that you need to train. You comments seem to indicate that there is no such difference but I am not convinced
Extending your feet forward, touching the ground forward and loading your foot forward can be three different things. The important one (from what I read and what works in my mind) is where your foot is when you transfer your weight to it. That is the one that is hardest to see in a video.
I think you are right in that, in the video you shared, his foot extends forward but, the way I see it, it also pulls back before it even contacts the ground let alone gets loaded. I think you can see this in a lot of the video where the shadow is in a great place let you judge when actual contact occurs. It seems to me you can see the gap between the shadow and the extended foot quite often. I think a flick forward with the foot before it is pulled back to contact the ground happens naturally when you run upright vs leaning forward. But that is just my opinion.
Is it possible you are going from heel striking is fine to the assumption that heel striking happens in front of the centre of mass? I only ask because I don’t see Sutton mention extended feet anywhere.
Thanks for your engagement, responses and link to another Sutton article. Before giving in allow me one more really nerdy try. Roth livestream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg8hadlVFTk Cam Wurf in front of Jesper Svensson, 5.54.50 onwards, good view at 5.55.30. At 6.00 Cam drops Jesper but Jesper will end up 2nd. Cam more classical, more up and down movement, upper body lean forward while Jesper keps feet close to the ground and body upright. You seem to say (as well as commentators at 6.48.15 onw) that this is just a matter of individual style and not trainable at all… No so sure but kindly put the matter to rest…
I used to have a very “up and down” style with a rather low cadence.
I had knee problems and had to stop running for a while. Each time I tried to restart I had knee pain again.
So I tried changing my style. I shortened my stride and raised my cadence. used zero drop “barefoot” shoes (Merrell Trail Gloves and Merrell Access) so I could feel if I was striking the ground hard or smoothly. I found it pretty easy to transition to a much different style, which I’ve now been using without injury since about 2012.
The biggest trick is to ignore pace entirely, actively shorten your stride, and concentrate on picking your feet up behind you NOT pushing off. This felt wrong for the first one or two runs and it was hard to resist the temptation to lengthen the stride and run as before, but then it suddenly started to feel natural. I’m certain I couldn’t run with my old style now without feeling truely awful (granted it was poor to start with).
