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This article is reprinted with permission from, and with special thanks to, the author, James
Sundquist.
I confess, I have used these pace tapes for years and absolutely LOVE them. It is not like listening to regular music tapes at all. These tapes provide you with amazing music, and a pace designed to use your conscience and subconscious mind. You may want to give them a try.
WHAT IS THE IDEAL PACE FOR WALKING, RUNNING AND CYCLING? By James Sundquist. We have been studying pacing, the biomechanics and bioacoustics of the human footfall, and gait analysis at the Medical & Sports Music Institute of America for ten years. Our first contract in 1986 was with the NIKE Corporation, who supplied us with elite runners from Athletics West, under the direction of Dick Brown. Our project called for the recording the sound of runners in their NIKE Odyssey Air Shoes. We were interested in studying the behavior of the shoe itself as well as the behavioral analysis of the runner in the shoes. Our initial study call for recording runners at a slow jogging pace which we performed at 150 steps per minute, a slow jogging pace. In subsequent recordings, we recorded male and female runners in the club up to sprints at 220 steps per minute. Over time we discovered that any pace less than 150 steps per minute was not biomechanically a running gait anymore, but rather a loping type gait. One could run at 140 steps per minute, but it was not a natural gait. We later began clocking the footfall frequency of recreational runners, which I will discuss in the paragraph on running. In recording the actual foot strike in an air shoe, most runners would strike with their heel first. In these recordings there was a distinct triplet in the impact of each footfall. Each foot stride would make a heel-followthrough-liftoff sound (three distinct sounds). This triplet or rocker like rhythm became a very crucial component because we were later to discover that this rocker-like motion of the footfall actually helped reduce the impact of the footfall. In airshoes the amplitude of the impact was reduced, and the waveform of the impact was rounded with less of a spike than would be produced in street shoes, for example. So, instead of creating music for the air
The copyright of the article The Ideal Pace! Part One in Running is owned by . Permission to republish The Ideal Pace! Part One in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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