I can already hear some of you groaning and the flame responses will arrive quickly but, I think there is something to walk breaks during training runs.
After about 16 months of stress fractures, a bout of COVID, and some sciatic pain, my physical therapist suggested using 2 minutes running/1 minute of walking as a means of returning to regular training. I scoffed and mentioned the much-hated Galloway Method but she said that it would be an easier way to get back to regular running. I started doing it and went 15 minutes my first day. The running kind of sucked because I was out-of-shape and had packed on about 30 pounds. The walk breaks were kind of welcome. I did this every other day until I could cover 45 minutes and I didn't have any pain or any soreness after a week of doing 2/1.
I'm not sure why I decided this but, I started doing nearly every run like this. I could eventually do 2-hour efforts and feel recovered by dinnertime. No soreness or lingering fatigue. It was weird and I panicked that I was just fooling myself into believing that I was getting fit. The weight came off simply because I was exercising again and my Garmin said that the workouts were solid Zone 2-3 efforts depending on how hard I did the run parts. I started thinking that maybe I was sort of running fartlek or reps all of the time and getting fitter because I was covering more ground as time went on. I ran a St. Paddy's Day 10K in 38:13 (no walk breaks) off of nothing but five days a week of Galloway run/walks. My previous post age 50 PR is 37:02 following more traditional methods like track work and non-stop 16-18 mile long runs.
My question to the coaches and knowledgeable posters out there is this: are Galloway runs just really long interval workouts if you are pushing the run parts at a decent clip? It seems like it might be similar to stuff like Zatopek or Schul did back in the day - lots of "reps" with short recoveries and no Lydiard type long runs. I kind of like training this way because I have stayed injury free for the past six months and my legs always feel pretty decent. I almost don't need rest days but still take them out of injury fears.