Run Walk Run Theory

I love to find tidbits of information that will help me train. Here is some about the run walk run theory by Jeff Galloway.

Why do walk breaks work?
By using muscles in different ways from the beginning, your legs keep their bounce as they conserve resources. When a muscle group, such as your calf, is used continuously step by step, it fatigues relatively soon. The weak areas get overused and force you to slow down later or scream at you in pain afterward. By shifting back and forth between walking and running muscles, you distribute the workload among a variety of muscles, increasing your overall performance capacity. For veteran marathoners, this is often the difference between achieving a time goal or not.

Walk breaks will significantly speed up recovery because there is less damage to repair. The early walk breaks erase fatigue, and the later walk breaks will reduce or eliminate overuse muscle breakdown.

The earlier you take the walk breaks, the more they help you!
To receive maximum benefit, you must start the walk breaks before you feel any fatigue, in the first mile. If you wait until you feel the need for a walk break, you've already reduced your potential performance.

How fast should the walk break be?
When you walk fast for a minute, most runners will lose about 15 seconds over running at their regular pace. But if you walk slowly, you'll have lost only about 20 seconds.

Once we find the ideal ratio for a given distance, walk breaks allow us to feel strong to the end and recover fast, while bestowing the same stamina and conditioning we would have received if we had run continuously.

training

"After you've built up your base mileage, it's really about how much pain you can take," says Barton..

For more ways to deal with pain here are some good IDEAS

A five-pound weight loss can take more than two minutes off your half-marathon time. Plus, weight loss can reduce your injury risk and improve your biomechanics

The Mind Is Divided

The power of the mind to push the body to its potential is limited by an internal conflict. The logical side (left brain) does not communicate with the creative side (right brain). A primary mission of the analytical side is to steer you into comfort and away from stress. The more stress you generate from running and other areas, the more negative messages: “slow down,” “stop,” or what is even worse, asking “why am I doing this?” If you don’t have a mental strategy for dealing with this barrage of negativity, you’ll start losing confidence in your ability to achieve your potential, on that day.
When you have a balance of physical and mental training, your left and right brains can work as a team: left side anticipating problems and right side searching for resources and solutions. This puts you in control of your running, instead of reacting to one crisis after another. While the potential of our body is limited, the intuitive and creative powers of the right side are not. Not only does this side monitor our capabilities, it finds resources you didn’t know that you had.

From Galloway’s Book on Running, 2nd ed. (Shelter Publications, 2002), p. 166

training tips

"You have to forget your last marathon before you try another.

Your mind can't know what's coming."

- Frank Shorter

training tips

I think I can I think I can

Don't misunderstand me! I do sit around thinking the website says we have to finish the first 9 miles in a pace of 13:??. Yes, that is freaking me out. But, in the back of my mind I also read only the streets will start opening again but we can keep walking. I just don't want to be "that one" still on the street when they open them back up again.

I did have the same fears about the Austin Marathon. Only it was more about the hills I would have to climb. Yes, we went up over an amazing 3,000 feet. And I felt every hill and it was a thrill in the end.

MarathonRookie.com

"Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired in the morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired."
- George S. Patton, U.S. Army General, 1912 Olympian




Don’t be set so much on willpower and determination that you miss out on the big picture of why you want to do this. By the way, why do you want to do this? Don’t let yourself off by stopping at your first answer! Dig deep! Why do you want to run a marathon or half marathon?
When you go beyond that first answer, you will begin to realize what is really driving you. When you learn what is really driving you, then you can use that to push yourself through willpower and determination. You will build the foundation that will get your subconscious mind working for you, not against you. In short, you are in for an incredible experience.

"We are different, in essence, from other men. If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon."
- Emil Zatopek, 1952 Olympic Marathon gold medalist