My experience with Jeff Galloway's Run Walk Program

OK, so a wonderful book sent me to check out Jeff Galloway's Run Walk Training Program.  Completely trusting the gals at Run Like A Mother, I googled, found it and went for it.  The philosophy behind it is that if you run and then walk for an interval you will in the long run, run faster and with less injury.  As I am currently training for a second half marathon and I got injured during training for the first, I was very open to sugestions.

Everyone who uses it will have a specific ratio based on their pace.  (See chart below)  When I run solo (no jog stroller) I typically am in the low 10's high 9's minute miles.  So when I run solo, I did the 4:1 ratio.  When I ran with the stoller, I did 3:1 (but 2:30 to 1 might be better)

Run-walk-run ratio should correspond to the training pace used:
8 min/mi—run 4 min/walk 35 seconds
9 min/mi— 4 min run-1 min walk (my solo ratio)10 min/mi—-3:1
11 min/mi—2:30-1 (my stroller ratio)12 min/mi—-2:1
13 min/mi—-1:1
14 min/mi—30 sec run/30 sec walk
15 min/mi—30 sec/45 sec
16 min/mi—30 sec/60 sec

How I felt:  The run segments felt much stronger and faster than straight running.  Think about it, anyone can run for 3-4 minutes; especially when you know that you will be walking for a full minute to recoop.  It changes your mindset and I found that I pushed myself harder for the 3-4 minutes and was able to recover and hydrate during the walk interval  And I didn't poop out at the end.

Runkeeper says:  Overall, my average time per minute was 9:45, I have never ran 6 miles at that pace.   Some of my fast running segments were around 8 minutes.   The runkeeper graph showed the intervals in segments representing what I felt:  first minute was fast and then progressively got a little slower toward segment 2-4.  The walk interval was only about 20 seconds slower than the run, so I mathematically I lost 1 minute and 20 seconds over the course of the run, but gained between 1-2 minutes per running segment because I was able to push myself knowing I got a break.  So that is how I ended up faster in the long run.

It was hard to find another 6 mile solo run, because lately, most have been with the jog stroller.  But here was one from Feb, which I know was solo:

http://runkeeper.com/user/clyoungsey/activity/41271798

And this is the one from this past Sunday: 

http://runkeeper.com/user/clyoungsey/activity/40928725

As you can see (and part could be from me just getting faster from doing it more) I am about 2 minutes per mile faster.  And when I was done, I felt amazing.  There was no fatique until about mile 5.

Rhonda, "Slow Mother Runner" also tried this method and she was on the treadmill so she could set her pace.  Here is her report.

Hope that helps explain it a little better!