Well the rainy weather caused us to take our run to the gym, so today was a treadmill run. One of my running buddies is following a 14 week Half Marathon training program which started this week. The plan is a run/walk program which progresses over the 14 weeks. Today’s plan was 5 miles – run 3 mins, walk 2 mins. I decided to give it a shot since I end up taking walk breaks anyway, I figured it might work out better if I ‘planned’ the breaks instead of waiting until I ‘needed’ the breaks.
I was pleasantly surprised how well I did using this method – I not only had a better overall time but I didn’t feel exhausted at the end. And since I was on the treadmill, I could control the pace at which I was running – on the run segments I set the pace at 5.5mph and on the walk segments 4.0. Not only did I feel better during the run segments but having to change the pace every 2-3 minutes made the workout go by more quickly!
Holy smokes, even with all those walk breaks I still averaged a better pace than if I had run for as long as I could before walking…hmmm, maybe there’s something to this run/walk training program! I’m going to keep following it for the next few workouts and see if I get the same kind of results 🙂
Sew Quilty Good 
Wow! That’s a great result! There’s definitely something to be said for doing those shorter run/walk segments. Have you checked out Jeff Galloway’s site? He’s a huge advocate of run/walk/run and his website makes some interesting reading. 🙂
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Hey Kirsten, Thanks! No, I haven’t checked out that website – but I will now! I’m still surprised how much easier it felt and I know I could have run for longer than 5 miles. I’m usually totally spent at the end of my long runs so this is very encouraging!
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