Run Faster

This weekend I listened to Episode 94 of the Dump Runner’s Club podcast - a podcast I highly recommend. In that episode, Matt discusses how your weight effects your running, including giving information about an ‘ideal weight’ formula for runners originally proposed by Dr. Stillman. The basic calculation is that if you are a sedentary male, you should weigh 110 pounds for your first 5′ in height + 5 1/2 pounds for every 1 inch thereafter. For women, it’s even more strict - 100 pounds for your first 5′ in height + 5 pounds for every pound thereafter. But that’s not where it stops - if you’re a middle distance runner, Stillman says you should weigh 12% less than the ’sedentary’ calculation - and 15% less if you’re a long distance runner.

I’ve got to say, this seems quite low to me. Even though my height and weight puts me right in the middle of a healthy BMI range, if I were to go by Stillman’s formula, I would have to consider myself quite a few pounds overweight. On the other hand, if I were at the weight Stillman would recommend for me given my height and putting myself in the long distance runner category, I would be underweight according to the BMI charts. So what’s a runner to think?

Personally, although I weigh myself fairly regularly - about once a week - I try not to worry too much about it. Instead, I concentrate on trying to maintain a healthy diet, and I watch my portion sizes, especially when I see a pound or two creep on. That said, I’m sure it would help my running - and it wouldn’t hurt my health - if I could manage to move my weight down a bit so that I was a bit more towards the low end of the healthy BMI range. In fact, according to this article by Joe Henderson, a 10 pound weight loss, which would still put me in a healthy BMI range, could translate into a 4 1/2 minute improvement in my half marathon time. Unfortunately, since I’m not that great about tracking my weight in my running log, I can’t really correlate any weight gains or losses against my race times.

So, I’m curious - when you’ve lost or gained weight, what differences have you seen in your running times?

If you’d like more information about Dr. Stillman’s weight calculations and how they relate to running performance, check out this article at Peak Performance.

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