The (Gallo)Way to Go

One of my BFFs, Kenny, is training for the Disney marathon this January.  He's following the Galloway method in an effort to have injury free training and a successful marathon.  Injury free????  Why haven't I been trying this?

The basic premise is that during your long runs (usually on Saturdays), you take walk breaks, the frequency of which depends on your long run pace.  Kenny has been running for intervals of 4 minutes with a 1 minute walk break following that.  The past few Saturdays, I'd been doing some long runs - 6 miles on August 11 and 8 miles on August 18.  I felt pretty good, but my knee had started to act up towards the end.  On August 25, I ran 9 miles with Kenny, and I can definitely say that incorporating those walk breaks made it the easiest 9 miles I've ever run!  

So, this past Saturday, I set out to run 10 miles.  I was confident that with the walk breaks, I could make it through that distance no problem.  The only difference was that this time, I'd asked my darling husband, Asa, to accompany me.  Asa works out all the time, but he is not really a runner, so I figured he'd say no...but he said yes.  Who does that?  I mean, who agrees to run 10 miles with no training?  It all started when I signed up for the Eight and Eat run a couple weeks ago (you should sign up too - or at least volunteer to help!).  I was telling him how it's for a great cause AND you get to eat pancakes at the end!  He said that he would sign up because he was sure he could run 8 miles.  Um, okay, honey...whatever you say.

Well, he did it.  He ran 8 miles, and made it 10 total but mostly walked the final 2.  I'm sure the walk breaks helped him a ton, and they definitely helped me!  That was about 60 hours ago, and his lack of training is still coming back to bite him; he is still sore and stiff and pretty beat up.  I, however, am feeling great...there is a hint of my old foot injury, so I'm making sure to ice it and not do too much running between my Saturday long runs.

It feels great to be getting back into distance running just as fall weather is around the corner.  I'm keeping fingers crossed that this method keeps working for me!