I just thought I'd mention the run/walk method. It's a widely used training method, most popularized by Jeff Galloway. I don't use it regularly, but for certain specific training, I found it to be valuable. Here is a link to a good article on Galloway's Run Injury Free with Jeff Galloway page. The article does a good job of explaining the details and recommending different run/walk ratios based on pace. Galloway defines a method for running a marathon, taking scheduled walk breaks through the first 18 miles. I didn't use the method in my first marathon, but I did take a few short unscheduled walk breaks. Perhaps I would have run a better marathon if I'd taken scheduled breaks. For my next marathon, my goal has been to strengthen my overall training enough that I don't have to walk at all.
However, I did find this method very useful in the distance-increasing phase of my first marathon training. When faced with running 16, 18, and 20 miles the first time, I took scheduled walk breaks. Here's how I did it. For example, when I first wanted to run 16 miles, on my first attempt, I alternated two minutes of walking with every eight minutes of running. I found that it really helped me make the distance the first time. The second time I ran 16 miles, I reduced the walking by about half, alternating one minute of walking with every nine minutes of running. By the third time I ran the new distance, I found that I could run the entire distance. I repeated this as I came to each new distance milestone up to 20 miles, and it helped a lot.
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