The run/walk method is widely used and widely derided. Jeff Galloway is a proponent of this method and you'll find a forum here on Cool Running devoted to the run/walk method. You'll also see many refer to it as "Gallowalking." But there are many that swear by it.

It all depends on how fast you are. For new runners or slow runners, it can be a great way to build a base and as a technique to complete longer races. For fast, experienced runners it doesn't make any sense.

Victor


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www.competitiverunner.com[/URL" target="_blank">

quote:<HR>Originally posted by Chutch:
I am not opposed to walking, but I wait until I feel the need to slow down. Is there any truth to his theory?
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"Planned" walking, as differentiated from "death march" can be really helpful for building endurance, esp. for longer runs, steep hills, and rough terrain. The saying is that if you wait until you have to walk, you've waited too long. Power hiking up a mountain can be an effort just below LT, if you keep it up an hour. Normal walk breaks should be "with purpose" - not a Sunday stroll. If you use extensive walk breaks (technical sections of trail, mountains/hills, etc), practice walking - it uses muscles differently than running.

Some people, esp. on flat, even surfaces, like roads or tracks, do them on planned time intervals (run 9 min, walk 1min; 25/5min, 3/2min, whatever works for you, your training, and your goals). The 25/5 might be used in a 24-hr race by competitive runners since the 5 min gives time for hr to lower and food can be digested.

I use walking mostly for obstacles, snow drifts, steep or big hills, etc. Since I'm on trails most of the time, these usually provide adequate recovery breaks. I'll sometimes add breaks to eat. While I can run and eat at the same time, I've found for longer distances, it's just easier to do the eating during a walk break.

Walking does allow people to run longer, like intervals allow more amounts of higher effort work than what you can do continuously, and it usually reduces recovery time.

Whether it affects your speed depends on your level of training, competitiveness, length of race, etc. Obviously a sprinter or 5k isn't going to gain by walk breaks, but a beginner marathoner might be faster with walk breaks and it would increase the probability of them making it to the start line uninjured. This is why a lot of people use them.

I've alway thought about this as the conventional wisdom posted above--good for beginners, increasingly less useful as speeds progress. I think I still believe that but I am questioning more and more where that threshold is. At my fall marathon I ran in a pack of 3, one of whom was using Galloway. Sort of disconcerting every 2 miles to have him disappear (I think he took 30sec walk breaks) only to have him catch up shortly. As I faded in the last five miles he broke away to run a 3:11 for a very nice PR.

I still don't think I could do it. I think it would be hard mentally for me to do all that starting and stopping.

Southern Man



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We're on a road to nowhere. Come on along.

My thoughts on walk breaks. If it you need to then use them. But if you don't then I don't think they are that beneficial. There are a lot of personal accounts of people picking it up at the end of a Marathon because they took walk breaks. I've had the opposite experience in my last three Marathons. Three Marathons ago I went from fifth place to second place at a water stop at around 23 miles because second, third and fourth place were walking through the water stop. I caught first place less then a mile from the finish and those other guys I never saw again. I didn't fade.
Don't get me wrong I thing the walk break thing is great for a new runner but if you can run through your training then run. There is nobody where I am running taking planned walk breaks unless they absolutely have to stop to get the water or Gatorade down at the water stations.

walk breaks are a awesome way to build your speed and endurance for your runs, weather you think/feel it at the time or not your doing your body a huge service I think. If you want to test this theory, when I train my soldiers I take them on 60/120 runs run full sprint for 60 seconds and walk for 120 seconds, the walking helps you have a chance to catch your breath more and recover for that next sprint. I garuntee your next run/race if you take a slow down break maybe not a full out walk but slow down past your normal pace for maybe 30/45 seconds and you can sprint out that last 500 meters. Iv've improved all my runs this way, I don't only run in the Army I'm a runner on my own time as well.

quote:<HR>Originally posted by mrinertia:
Everyone is different. Your best shot is to try it and see if it works for you.<HR>

FWIW, planned walk breaks didn't work for me at all the one time I seriously tried it. They worked well enough in the long training runs, but not in the race. Around mile 18 or so I found it increasingly difficult to "get the engine restarted" after each walk break, to the point that by mile 22 or 23 I was walking almost as much as I was running. It was the second-slowest of the five marathons I've run, and only ten minutes better than my worst.

Fourteen months later, after following a conventional training schedule, I ran a slightly hillier marathon 50 minutes faster. So, for slower runners, this might be one of those "your mileage may vary" questions.