1 week down, 15 to go! I successfully completed week 1 of my 16 week half marathon training plan. I’m betting this thing gets harder because I felt like I hardly sweated at all this week. It consisted of four runs (2,5,2,7 miles respectively). The only hard one was the 5-miler in the middle of the week. The 2-milers were flat, treadmill runs at about 10 minute mile pace (these were supposed to be easy). The 5-miler was a “tempo workout” with 3 miles at 8:57 pace. This wasn’t terribly hard, but I didn’t feel well and I was on the treadmill. But the 7-miler on Sunday was outside with a friend–and whoa what a difference those two things make.
My friend T, is training for the same race that I am. She’s a few steps ahead of me because she’s already completed a half marathon, and she’s run with training groups before. She recently read my post where I said I was looking for a training partner and within a day she had called me and suggested that we run together. We met at her house on Sunday morning at 9:00. It was cold and raining and as the run progressed, it got colder and started snowing. The weather was definitely not ideal. But I didn’t care.
When T ran with her running group, she used the very popular Galloway training method. It’s a method where you incorporate walk breaks into your training runs. There are two main reasons for doing this. 1st off, walking uses a different set of leg muscles than running does. So by walking, you give your running muscles a break and cause less damage to them–especially on longer runs. Another benefit is that by taking walk breaks, you give your respiratory system a chance to recover as well, which helps you feel refreshed during your run and keeps you motivated and able to keep running. There’s a pretty summary of the program on Jeff Galloway’s website. But of course, it’s how he makes his living so it is only a summary. But you still might want to check it out.
On our run on Sunday, we followed every 6-minute run with a 30-second walk break. Our 7-mile run took 1:14, which was slightly slower than it was supposed to be. It was hard to run the slow pace (10:27) that I was supposed to run, and the walk breaks slowed our pace a little bit more, but as you can see by the chart below, my heart rate was low the entire time. At least it was low for me. Overall, the 7 miles seemed to fly by and I had a good time. I’m sure it was because of the company and being outside, but maybe the Galloway method had something to do with it too. If you’re interested in stretching out your longer runs, maybe you should take a look at the program.
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I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Galloway method and I bought his book “So you want to do a Half-marathon” or something like that.
Another plus of the run/walk is that the walk breaks let you flush the lactic acid out so you don’t get as tired.
Congratulations on completing week 1! I think it gets “easier” from here because you are committed. I only have a couple of weeks left before my half marathon, but I think you have a leg up on me. You at least have a training partner. Keep having fun and my only other advice is to listen to your body.
After reading your post yesterday, I looked up Galloway. I used to run a lot more than I am running now, and I’m trying to get back into it at the same level as before. Last night at the gym, I used his run/walk suggestion to do a 5k program on the treadmill and it felt great. His site suggested a split to use based on your pace, which I followed. The walk interval was the perfect balance/recovery to the running part, and I thought it really made a difference in me sticking it out and actually finishing the program. I will definitely try this again.
I use a method similar to this thanks to the Couch to 5k running plan. Right now, I’m working my way back up to 5k (a back injury of my own and starting a new job derailed me), and I definitely incorporate a run-walk approach to increase distance/time without overexerting myself.