Jeff Galloway was the guest speaker at the Charleston Distance Run this weekend. When pressed about whether Gallo-walking will actually help elites, he said they benefit those racing 6 minutes per mile and slower.
Careful there Fish Man. You're going to get the elite wannabes out telling you that if you average 6 minutes per mile for a marathon that you are slow.
I think someone did the math for this on an earlier post. Making up for walking while maintaining an average 6 minute mile pace still drove a hypothetical Gallowalker to running too fast in between.
I have heard Jeff Galloway speak at one our of our running clinics and said that he has had a male 2:28 marathoner follow walk-run. He did go on to say that the walks were very short.
To add a little fuel to the fire........
Remember how many times Bill Rodgers stopped/walked during his first Boston win? 5 times I believe! Granted this was at water stations and to tie his shoes, but he still ran 2:09 by doing this.
Maybe some of the current crop of marathoners should consider the same?
Running a 6 min/mile marathon (2:37:30) IS slow (for you), IF you can run a 2:20 marathon. And a 3hr marathon IS slow (for you) if you can run a 2:37. Its all relative to the person. But it is so obvious that:
PACING yourself correctly to the time you want to run is the best way to run a race,
that its preposterous that anyone would suggest differently.
When I was a freshman in HS one of my first practices we ran the XC course for a time. One guy went out terribly hard the first 800meters, he then slowed down tremendously and almost walked. He kept looking back and when we got within 100 meters he went hard again for about 500 meters. We again got within about 100 meters and he again sprinted. And for a bit I thought "Oh, no, maybe I am doing this all wrong, this guy is in the lead and he is taking breaks, maybe that is easier!" Well as everyone who is reading this can probably predict we slowly got closer and finally passed the guy while he was walking, quite degectedly. He tried this "technique" a few more times and failed each time. Then he quit the team.
Let us all get one thing clear: regardless of whether you are an elite runner, a runner, or a pathetic recreational walking and loudly, talking gallowobbler, 6 minutes a mile is slow. One's perspective does not change that fact. For example, $1,000 for a shirt is expensive. This inescapable fact remains true whether you are Bill Gates or whether you are grandpa begger on 4th and New York. The shirt is no cheaper simply because Bill can't afford it. The same is true of the 6 minute average. A 6 minute average doesn't become any faster because a fat pig can't run it. It is what it is--a 6 minute average; a full 40 seconds slower per mile than the sub-elites of the sport (over a marathon, that is).I am King Benji.
So, it's slow compared to the elite times. But it's fast compared to the majority of other times. Just like your shirt is expensive compared to the cost of the majority of shirts.
I remember an incident that happened to me several years ago while participating in the NYC Marathon. I was hurting bad and had shifted into survival mode somewhere around mile 22. While walking through a water stop somewhere north of Central Park, some guy yelled at me, "Don't walk! I didn't come out here to watch you walk!" To me, that guy had the right idea. Amazing that some average Joe from Manhattan was so much more in tune with the true essence of running a race than that guy Galloway.
Jeff Galloway was the guest speaker at the Charleston Distance Run this weekend. When pressed about whether Gallo-walking will actually help elites, he said they benefit those racing 6 minutes per mile and slower.
Jeff Galloway was the guest speaker at the Charleston Distance Run this weekend. When pressed about whether Gallo-walking will actually help elites, he said they benefit those racing 6 minutes per mile and slower.
Just in case you have an inquiring mind.
What else did he say?
He predicted that in 21 years an amazing Dutch Ethiopian will use the run-walk method to win the London Marathon against one of the greatest women's fields ever assembled.