Have been running for a few months, and never paid attention to cadence, but my new watch measures it and was curious about the importance of cadence in running.
I'm 6'3 and 190lbs, and naturally have long strides, but I have observed that my cadence is much lower than other runners at the same paces.
For reference, some recent results:
Half marathon: 1:24 at 158 spm average
5km: 17:40 at 162 spm average
Even doing fast 1km splits (3:05-3:10) my cadence for those splits was around 166-168 spm.
I compared my cadence to other runners who ran the HM with me at the same pace and they all had an average between 174 and 182, compared to my 158. Is there something I'm doing wrong, or is cadence that correlated to height? Are long strides bad? Should I try to improve my running cadence, and how?