Stryd powermeters for runners

Beat the Pace Game. Run with Power to Experience a Breakthrough.

What happens when you face the biggest hill you’ve seen? You make the challenging decision to charge up full force. You peek at the power display after the first minute. “340 watts…345 watts” You just unlocked the key to your breakthrough. Your breathing is steady. Your legs are strong. You will be at the top in rare form. It is your reward for the perfect power plan.

Hans van Dijk and Ron van Megen released some new secrets from their “Secret of Running” you how to forget pace and run with power. Pace fools the mind. You can run strong, but pace says you are running slow. Power encourages you. Strong effort means strong wattage.

Conclusions and outlook

The examples prove quite clearly that running at constant power is superior to running at constant pace, particularly when the conditions (resistances) during the workout or race are not constant. At any significant gradients and wind speeds, it will be detrimental or even impossible to run at a constant pace. Similarly, it will be necessary to adapt the pace in races with tougher footing, such as trails.

Theoretically, running at constant power is the best strategy to provide the best results. When running at constant power, the pace will be automatically reduced in tough sections (uphill, headwind, soft footing, etc.). In the easier sections of the race or workout, the pace will increase automatically.

Unfortunately, the present state-of-the-art running power meters do not yet reflect the impact of the wind and surface footing correctly. This means that presently the main advantage of running with power meters is to maintain constant power during hilly courses.

In spite of these limitations, we are very excited that power meters do provide us with an opportunity to determine our ECOR on a daily basis, so we can try to optimize our running form. We are sure that this will pave the way to concrete improvements in our ECOR and race results.

We realize that this will not be easy because for us—and for most people—the running form has been habituated over many years of running. We will not be able to change it overnight. But with time and concrete data, we are confident we will be able to get some improvement.

Thank you to the co-authors Ron van Megen and Guido Vroemen.