It was the night before the Lululemon Seawheeze half-marathon in Vancouver, and I was talking to the pacer I planned to follow during the race. He was promising me he’d pay extra attention to me to help me meet my goal time. “You might lose track of me sometimes,” I warned him. “I use run-walk-run.”
This is always the thing that makes me feel the most self-conscious-sure, lots of runners take walk breaks around mile 15 of a marathon, but taking one five minutes into a 5K has always felt like it makes me look out of shape. But Galloway says it's all about calibrating the run time to the walk time, regardless of how much distance you've covered (or plan to cover): When he laces up, he runs for 15 seconds, then walks for 15 seconds.
"Look, if someone wants to run nonstop, there's no problem with that," he says. "But they're gonna pay for it. There will be a distance when the stress is going to build up on weak links and something is going to break. What we do with each walk break is we erase the fatigue and stress that builds up on those weak links."
Still not convinced? Runners using run-walk-run have completed marathons in under two and a half hours.
What Run-Walk-Run Does for My Running
Personally, I shaved eight minutes off my previous half-marathon time using run-walk-run at that Lululemon race and felt great-I beat my goal time by almost two minutes.
I may have been hiding my run-walk-run status all this time, but I've never regretted it: I had a baby earlier this year, and I never had to stop running during my pregnancy thanks to those little walk breaks. I'd just reduce the number of minutes I spent running and increase my walking time-in my 39th week I was at about one minute of running to one minute of walking. (I did stop at 40 weeks, but only because I was worried I'd run one morning and go into labor later in the day and be out of much-needed endurance reserves!).
I picked my running back up at about the same ratio as soon as I got exercise clearance from my doctor postpartum. Sure, I was slow, but the run felt amazing.
And make no mistake: It was a real run.
