This is one of those things that really doesn't need to be considered.

agree. was trolling him. it is another non-spherical earth because of mountains argument.

I totally agree with your sentence. Because what, you don't think that elite runners think about their stride rate? That they don't know their stride rate? And lol if you think that ideal turnover is something that occurs naturally in most people, including elites.

Having too slow a stride rate is like, the single most common mistake made by people who are in exactly HWGWF's position. Turning over too slowly leads to all kinds of inefficiencies and increases chance of injury by a ton. Luckily it's a pretty easy mistake to correct. So I thought it might be one of those things that might be helpful to a beginning distance runner who is in the first few weeks of potentially a five year program and who is asking for advice.

If you shrunk the earth to the size of a basketball it would feel as smooth as glass if you ran your fingers over it

disagree. shrink it and gravity fails to hold the oceans in place imo. still not spherical.

I'm 29, grew up playing lots of sports, was a pretty good sectionally ranked, not quite national level junior tennis player. So I had an athletic background but not much in the way of running. I started running regularly when I moved west 5+ years ago, put in 2 years of about 20 miles a week just forming a permanent habit, then joined the local track club and have trained a bit more seriously, usually closer to 40 miles/wk with periods of around 60 miles/wk. My 5k progression over 5 years (usually 2-3 5k road races per year):

2005 - 20:33
2006 - 19:09
2007 - 17:33
2008 - 17:06
2009 - 16:42

I think it's certainly a fair bet for OP. Much moreso than talent it will be important to consistently put in the time and miles without overdoing it early on. Listen to your body and give it time to adapt to becoming a regular runner. It can take a lot of people a couple of seasons to withstand 50+ miles a week without breaking down at some point.

actually, if you shrank it gravity would become stronger. Altho a host of other problems would emerge so you still might be right

so lets just keep it the same size it is now and just blow yourself up so that the earth was equivalent to a basketball, it would feel smooth...so its still spherical

I have been around numerous Olympian and world championship team members and I am pretty sure that none of them have ever mentioned stride rate as something they are explicitly worried about. If anything its more of an implicit thought unless your a hurdler.

I would assume because at that level they all have any stride problems fixed so there is no need for them to talk about it or worry about it.

Kind of like how no elite cyclist is busy worried about what his cadence is, because once you get any good, you 1) know exactly what your current cadence is simply by feel and 2) one of the first things you did when you started trying to get better was work on your cadence.

This is about as pertinent as claiming you sucked off Bolt and he threw a five roper on your face.

This is a decent analogy but I'm under the assumption that working on your cadence on a bike is going to much more important to a cyclist than stride rates for a runner. I guess fixing form issues will probably "improve" stride rate but I've never heard a runner say, "Wow, I need to learn to keep my stride rate at 180/min in order to get better at ther 5k." Form/stride issues are something that is harped on a lot at any level just not rate in the sense its being used here.

By been around, I mean coached by and trained with; if that's not at all pertinent, to each his own.

I bet.

Easily verified with the internet . Granted I sucked pretty badly after high school but whatever.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...C8_Nngeo1pGCBg

Cool. I wasn't aware any Olympic/World class coaches were **** stupid enough to train someone running shorter distance with someone of mid-distance. Learn something new each day.