The Galloway Method

OK so I am now entering new territory with my training. Up to this point, I was doing (pretty much) the exact same thing I'd been doing for months. That is, running three times a week with the mileage like this: 3, 3, 6.

Now I'm moving into a stage where I'm going to 8 and above. No more 6 mile long runs for me. Right now, it will be 4 miles, 4 miles then a long run (up to 20 miles) on Saturdays.

Eeek. It's scary and a bit exciting. I haven't done an eight mile run since I had a stress fracture in my foot two years ago.

I am also using the Galloway method for the long runs. That seems to be making a world of difference ... even in the short 6 miles. It's amazing. I feel so much more energized at the end. I definitely think this will make a big distance when it comes to the marathon.

So background on Jeff Galloway, he's a FAST marathoner, who's done tons of marathons. And won some. He has runners on a system (based on goal time) where you walk/run. The ratio is about pacing. How fast do you expect to run? Well first he asks, "How fast do you usually run?" For me, if I'm doing a short 5K I can run between 8 and 8:30 minute miles. If it's a longer run, it's closer to 9 minute miles.

But Galloway says that you should run long runs about 2 minutes slower than average. So we're looking at about an 11 minute mile. That way, we should use this to add in our walk breaks. Ashley and I have been doing a 10 minute mile for three minutes then walking for one minute.

Here's the ratios for TRAINING runs:
8 min/mi—run 4 min/walk 35 seconds
9 min/mi— 4 min run-1 min walk
10 min/mi—-3:1
11 min/mi—2:30-1
12 min/mi—-2:1
13 min/mi—-1:1
14 min/mi—30 sec run/30 sec walk
15 min/mi—30 sec/45 sec
16 min/mi—30 sec/60 sec

There are several reasons to do this. A lot of people (my friend Erika included) hate the idea of ever walking during the race. But I just want to finish ... preferably without dying. So I am all about walking. I want to run most of the way, of course but I'm down with the walk.

Here are a few reasons that Galloway gives for walking:

• By using muscles in different ways from the beginning, your legs keep their bounce as they conserve resources. When a muscle group, such as your calf, is used continuously step by step, it fatigues relatively soon.

• Most runners will record significantly faster times when they take walk breaks because they don't slow down at the end of a long run. Thousands of time-goal-oriented veterans have improved by 10, 20, 30 minutes and more in marathons by taking walk breaks early and often in their goal races.

• The mental benefit: breaking 26 miles into segments, which you know you can do ... Even sub-three hour marathoners continue to take their walk breaks to the end. One of them explained it this way: "Instead of thinking at 20 miles I had six more gut-wretching miles to go, I was saying to myself one more mile until my break.' Even when it was tough, I always felt I could go one more mile."

• The weak areas get overused and force you to slow down later or scream at you in pain afterward. By shifting back and forth between walking and running muscles, you distribute the workload among a variety of muscles, increasing your overall performance capacity. For veteran marathoners, this is often the difference between achieving a time goal or not.

• Walk breaks will significantly speed up recovery because there is less damage to repair. The early walk breaks erase fatigue, and the later walk breaks will reduce or eliminate overuse muscle breakdown.