At today's Inaugural Santa Rosa (CA) Marathon I got a very strong reminder of how effective the run-walk race method can be, as I was beaten to the finish line by a woman in my age group doing a 10:1. She averaged about a 7:40 mile when running and benefitted from the walk breaks to recover some energy. I talk to a lot of runners who don't want to do run-walk because they think it really isn't running or that you can't go fast or get a good time. Well this woman finished 26.2 in 3:36 and has a PR of 3:30. That's just 10 minutes behind my PR which got me into the Boston Marathon.
There's a lot of benefit to the run-walk method and many of the top marathon coaches including
Jeff Galloway are fans. The very biggest being the recovery time you get in the walk breaks.
Our
TNT program encourages new runners to start with run-walk as it lets you really determine what level of endurance you can sustain. You can adjust your run-walk ratio as your endurance increases. There's no need to move to full-time running unless you feel up to it and want to.
I've never been a run-walker, myself, but may need to revisit this method after today.
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