Galloway Method

My training for the Philly marathon is going well. This weekend my long run gets up to 9 miles. As I mentioned before, I'm following a training program made famous by former US Olympic team member and running coach Jeff Galloway. It basically calls for a "run/walk" method throughout the entire race that prepares your body for a faster recovery and prevents injury. With my constant knee problems, IT-band problems, and even hip flexor tightness, I am all about reducing injury!

The Galloway method calls for you to run 4 minutes, then walk 1. You do this for the entire race, starting in the very beginning even if you are not tired yet. (A lot of distance runners will walk when they get tired but the Galloway method calls for you to start walking from the very beginning). While you would think that walking for a solid minute every four minutes would cause you to dramatically slow down your overall time for the race, in fact the opposite happens. It's completely counter-intuitive, but taking those minute-long walk breaks actually can make you FASTER. What happens is your body gets so used to the regular recovery periods that you actually run faster during the "run" portions. This is exactly what's happening to me, and it is phenomenal!

I've been training with this method for three weeks now. Yesterday I did a 5-mile run at what was supposed to be an "easy" pace. I do run/walk for every single run (except for a couple times in the next 16 weeks that I'll be doing interval training). Well, yesterday my 5.1 mile run came in at 52:56. In a 52-minute long run, I took TEN minute-long walk breaks. That means even WALKING for ten minutes of my total run, I was STILL averaging 10:22 minute miles for 5 miles. That is pretty darn good for me! I think during the half marathon I did in April, I averaged 12-minute miles. As I said before, I don't really have a time goal in mind for the marathon, but I've been so pleasantly surprised at the times I'm clocking!