Galloway - Truth about the Long Run??

I followed galloway to a "T" for my first marathon. did all those crazy 29 mile runs with 3 days off. And you know what? I went from couch potato to sub-3:10 in 1 year. guess it works.

caveman wrote:

I have never understood how anyone can run up to 29 miles on Sunday while taking 3 days off or doing cross training and only short runs on the other days, (between 25 to 65 mins). There simply isnt the base during the week to support a long haul run or even running a 5K race on Sunday.

I'm glad to see the mostly thoughtful and intelligent comments on this topic for a change. I am a rather slow runner but above average for my age group. I have trained for marathons every way imaginable, doing long runs fast, slow, with and without walk breaks, a few long runs, many long runs, long runs every week, every three weeks, etc., none of which has made any difference in my fitness or race times. The two variables that affect (improve) my race times are consistent high (for me) mileage, and being careful to stay injury-free. It is quite difficult for me to both stay injury free and run high mileage, but when I'm able to do it is when I race my best, regardless of my long run strategy.

wellnow wrote:

I just don't get the anti Galloway bravado here. So 93% of letsrunners can beat 4 hours? Who cares?

What anti-Galloway bravado? I don't see what you're getting at here. All I see is people discussing the costs and benefits of continuous running vs. Galloway style training. Most people are finding Galloway to be wrong. I don't know about you, but I don't call that anti-anything. So add something constructive or just leave it be.

Michael Scott wrote:

Wow, that one guy totally insulted Lydiard by comparing him to Galloway. Don't do that, please. Galloway's methods are a money making public relations stunt designed to appeal to beginning runners. Lydiard's methods are the real deal ways for a dedicated runner to achieve optimum performance.

As for what Lydiard said about a 20 second break, yeah, walking reduces your heart rate almost instantly and begins to give you less of a workout. It alters how your body takes the total stress of the run. The more you walk, the less you stress your body. That's great if you can't handle the distance you're trying to cover, but pretty unhelpful if you know what you're doing and you pick training workouts that optimize your running ability and allow you to actually practice running for the whole duration.

I would take any of Lydiard's physiology comments with a huge side order of salt.

HR is a poor indicator of what is happening in the body. While walking will lower HR, in 20 sec the drop is not going to be that great, and I would argue meaningless. The half-life of HR is about 70 sec. Meaning that if you are running and go from 50 bpm to 150 bpm and then stop, it will take about 70 sec for your HR to get down to 100 bpm. (Obviously there is some variation in there).

The idea that a break is bad is silly. Do you think that if you are out on a long run and it gets interrupted by say a train, a traffic light or having to stop to pee that the effects of that run are eliminated?

All training is interval training from one perspective.

Michael Scott wrote:

As for what Lydiard said about a 20 second break, yeah, walking reduces your heart rate almost instantly and begins to give you less of a workout. It alters how your body takes the total stress of the run. The more you walk, the less you stress your body. That's great if you can't handle the distance you're trying to cover, but pretty unhelpful if you know what you're doing and you pick training workouts that optimize your running ability and allow you to actually practice running for the whole duration.

Sad that you or lydiard cant see the obvious. The short break isnt done to reduce the cardiovascular stimulus but to promote the neuromuscular recover. Anyhow its true that after 20seconds of an easy run the effect is reduced, but after some 20seconds of get back to the run you regain the effect and you are agin in the zone of the heart rate positive effect. You simply lost 20 seconds of a long 2 hours effect, may be 10 to 20 times 20seconds spread by a 2 hours long run, but the neuro muscular benefit as well as the mental benefit of that short breaks does very positive effect.

More precisely, Lydiard said that the rest break must be kept to 12 seconds. There are lots of funny things in Lydiard, but I always thought this the most peculiar; however, Arthur did once claim there was some research report behind this.

Precisely Watson wrote:

wellnow wrote:

I just don't get the anti Galloway bravado here. So 93% of letsrunners can beat 4 hours? Who cares?

What anti-Galloway bravado? I don't see what you're getting at here. All I see is people discussing the costs and benefits of continuous running vs. Galloway style training. Most people are finding Galloway to be wrong. I don't know about you, but I don't call that anti-anything. So add something constructive or just leave it be.

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Actually Holmes, I was refering to the general anti Galloway bravado on letsrun, not specifically this thread.

And if read carefully, you will see that I did offer something constructive.

The original assertion is patently untrue. I trained with a group for a marathon a few years back and they used a Gallowalking approach. We did many long runs, Gallowalking style, including a 26-mile run at one point, taking a one-minute walk break every 7 minutes or so. At the end of the 26 mile run, I felt fine - only the mildest fatigue - but it was in perhaps 4hrs 30 min.

When I ran the marathon, I actually ran without taking breaks (intentional breaks, anyway). By about halfway, I started to tighten up, and the rest of the run was an awful death march. I had not done any CONTINUOUS runs over about 13 miles! I labored to a 3:24, largely on the back of a first half at about 3 hr pace. So, my conclusion was that Gallowalking is in no way a substitute for continuous running. It is an apples and oranges comparison. Gallowalking will help you finish long distances without much soreness or fatigue, which certainly has its place, but it will NOT translate to a good marathon run continuously.

In fairness to Gallowalking, my overall training regimen may have been flawed in other ways - consistency, pace, etc - but the main lesson I learned was that, if you want to run a good continuous marathon, run continuously.

I think taking a minute to piss and drink fluids far outweighs any effects of not stopping for a minute to do either. However I don't think that stopping to walk a quarter mile every five miles is a good thing.

Think of it as interval training.

wellnow wrote:

Think of it as interval training.

It's not as simple as "interval training = good." For interval training to be good, you need to have the right relationship between interval pace, interval length, recovery pace, and recovery length. The argument being made is that runs at easy pace with rests as per Galloway at walking pace is not the right mix for improving performance. It may well be a good mix for minimizing the impact of a given run distance, but for 99% of us competitive runners, that is not the goal.

An analogy to the Galloway "intervals," if you would like to call them that, might be 10 x 100m at 5k pace with 10 minute walking breaks. This is better than no workout, but it's not a good workout.

wellnow wrote:

I just don't get the anti Galloway bravado here. So 93% of letsrunners can beat 4 hours? Who cares?

He champions mediocrity.

AnEngineer wrote:

wellnow wrote:

Think of it as interval training.

It's not as simple as "interval training = good." For interval training to be good, you need to have the right relationship between interval pace, interval length, recovery pace, and recovery length. The argument being made is that runs at easy pace with rests as per Galloway at walking pace is not the right mix for improving performance. It may well be a good mix for minimizing the impact of a given run distance, but for 99% of us competitive runners, that is not the goal.

An analogy to the Galloway "intervals," if you would like to call them that, might be 10 x 100m at 5k pace with 10 minute walking breaks. This is better than no workout, but it's not a good workout.

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You're overthinking this. It's ok to stop a few times during long runs. You can have a pee or a crap. Drink or eat. Stop and talk to a freind you meet along the way, or even a complete stranger, that's allowed too. You're also permitted to stop and re-tie your shoelaces. Why even admireing the scenery is permitted too.

Here is why wrote:

wellnow wrote:

I just don't get the anti Galloway bravado here. So 93% of letsrunners can beat 4 hours? Who cares?

He champions mediocrity.

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And makes lots of money doing that too. Has the man no shame?

[quote]Krayzelburg wrote:

I labored to a 3:24, largely on the back of a first half at about 3 hr pace. So, my conclusion was that Gallowalking is in no way a substitute for continuous running.quote]

My conclusion is that you went out TOO FAST the first half of your marathon. Prior training has nothing to do with that.

Just the fact you were able to run 13.1 miles in 1:30 (when you started tightening up) shows that you were probably closer to 3:10 shape. You should have run the first half 5 minutes slower. You ending time would have been 10-15 minutes faster.

Here is why wrote:

He champions mediocrity.

wellnow wrote:

And makes lots of money doing that too. Has the man no shame?

Nope. None. He's like Dean Karnazes that way. Only the worst part is that, unlike Karnazes, Galloway is a former Olympian who knows better but STILL sells out.

wellnow wrote:

You're overthinking this. It's ok to stop a few times during long runs. You can have a pee or a crap. Drink or eat. Stop and talk to a freind you meet along the way, or even a complete stranger, that's allowed too. You're also permitted to stop and re-tie your shoelaces. Why even admireing the scenery is permitted too.

Stopping once to pee or drink or tie your shoe is a lot different than Gallowalking.

Your earlier comment asserting "it's like intervals" was incorrect for reasons previously stated.

At this point, I'm not actually sure what point you're even trying to make.

Your running pace might be sligtly quicker if you stop a few times, even if the overall time is slower

AnEngineer wrote:

The argument being made is that runs at easy pace with rests as per Galloway at walking pace is not the right mix for improving performance. It may well be a good mix for minimizing the impact of a given run distance, but for 99% of us competitive runners, that is not the goal.

Isn't the goal of any workout to achieve some desired physiological benefit while incuring the minimum amount of stress? As I mentioned earlier, Galloway's approach to the long run clearly requires less recovery. The question is whether the training benefit is essentially the same. To answer that, one would have to identify and quantify "the benefit" of a long run. I don't know how to do that, but I don't see it as self-evident that it's false. The last time I looked at Galloway's programs, he prescribed much longer long runs than is typical, like the 26 miler noted above. How does that play into the stress/benefit trade? Suppose one does their 20 miler with a walk/run strategy so the reduced recovery allows them to run a little bit longer on their tempo run a couple days later. Is that a net benefit? I don't know, but it seems like we discard things like this out of hand without much thought.