Just as President Obama’s beliefs on homosexual marriage have “evolved” so my feelings about the run/walk/run method of training has evolved. He originally felt that marriage was between a man and a woman but once his enlightened and all wise 10 year old daughter opened his eyes, he evolved to an understanding that it didn’t matter whether you were married to a man, a woman, a sheep, or a park bench, as long as you were committed and shared a passion for loving, you should be able to live together as “married”. I didn’t need a child prodigy to help me in my revelation on training methods, just a book and aging joints. As maturity and age has taken reigns of my running career I have decided that my goals are not to set personal records (PR in runner jargon) but to simply enjoy and survive. I want to be running marathons, albeit very slowly, at age 80. I would rather be a spindly old codger out there still searching for the porta potties, at a much more frequent rate mind you, then watching on the sidelines. It means nothing to me now to say I did a sub 4 hour marathon if it resulted in a limitation of longevity. Instead of going by the adage, live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse, I want to live slow, die ancient, and leave a corpse that has 15% body fat and blisters from my last long run. So that brings me back to the run/walk/run training method for distance runners. This is a concept created and made popular by running guru Jeff Galloway, author, Olympian, and all around good guy who has been training marathoners for many years. He is convinced after working with countless runners of all shapes, sizes, and ages that the key to staying injury free is to allow for multiple brief rest breaks throughout a training run. These walk breaks are in a ratio to time run, for example, I have been doing a 5/1 ration meaning that I run for 5 minutes and then walk a minute. To the purest this sounds like complete heresy, tantamount to a politician telling the truth for a few seconds in between his regular spouting of lies, but it all depends on your goals. If you want to run for the rest of your life then this is a good method. If you want to set age group records then stick to your maniacal training and I will visit you in the old folks home after your knee replacement. Actually Galloway claims that many of his devotees actually complete a marathon faster using this method than with the traditional run until you drop philosophy. The idea is that you lose only a few seconds per mile with the walk breaks and can more than compensate with a slightly increased pace during the running phase. I have not been able to achieve that level of accomplishment yet, but my times have not been much different. the biggest difference I have noticed is how I feel the next day after a long run. In the past, a twenty miler would require a shelf load of Motrin, ice packs and going down stairs backwards for a few days. Now with run/walk/run I feel as spry as Neal Patrick Harris in a show tunes revue the next day and have even gone for a short run to get the juices flowing. This was inconceivable with my prior training methods and I have seen my times stay essentially the same. Call it maturity or dumb luck, but I am a believer in this method of training. The hardest part is applying this technique during a race. I only use this method in the marathon as for me it doesn’t really apply with shorter distances. The challenge is to use the ratio from the very beginning of the race. Galloway and his minions are adamant that for proper benefit you must begin the alternating strides from the first mile on. Anyone who has participated in a large marathon (i.e. Chicago, New York etc) realize that stopping to walk in the first few miles is setting yourself up for shoe marks up your back as the stampeding hoard propels forward like a swarm of locusts on the Oklahoma prairie. Most big city marathons are run on paved streets and there is usually space on the fringes by the curbs that allow for walking; however, in some, such as Boston, the route is populated from the beginning with crazed spectators lining the roads sometimes 4 deep. So not only is there the psychological barrier to early walking in a race, but also the physical restraints of how to do it that must be overcome. I remember thinking many times when seeing a fellow marathoner walking before even the first mile is traversed that this poor fool will never make 26.2 miles if he is already walking because in the past I would only walk when my legs were threatening to go on strike if I didn’t. At the time I didn’t know this was a strategy for longevity and simply interpreted it as poor preparation and bad luck. I got a hint that there was something else going on however as I began to notice these walkers passing me during the running phase of their approach, only over time to stay so far ahead thatI would not even come close to catching them as they hit their next walk break. Maybe there was something there I thought through my fatigued and foggy brain. Once I adopted the run/walk/run method, I now gladly join these early race walkers and glance at them with a knowing smile and mutter”Galloway?” to their smiling acknowledgement. We have become a brethren understanding the benefits of lasting exertion at the expense of hip replacements and pot bellies. We are the running Gnostics challenging the orthodoxy convinced that our knowledge based on experience and a willingness to experiment will be our running salvation. I did a twenty miler yesterday using the run/walk/run method and this morning I am getting to go on a bike ride with my wife. Not bad for a 53 year old, but hey, I’ve still got 30 years of running in me.
Continue reading
    Share: