Interesting run/walk finding

[Bazza1234]

On Monday morning, as an experiment , I ran a 25 minute non-stop run as per Week7 - plus the usual 5 minute warmup and cool down. I figured that this was 25 minutes of running and 10 minutes of walking - so a run walk ratio of 2.5/1. So - this morning I ran the same time (35 minutes) and course at the same time of day as a run/walk - running for 2.5 minutes and walking for 1 minute. This time in the 35 minutes I ran 300 metres further and at a pace about 20 seconds per minute faster overall.

I am going to finish my C25K programme this coming Saturday - by following the 35 minute pace runner( who I am sure will run non-stop) and see if I can beat last week's PB of 36 minutes. After that, I will start on the 16 week Disney "Tower of Terror" 10 mile (16K) programme to set me up for the 14 klm Sydney City to Surf run in August. I will definitely be using a run/walk to do that - as firstly I do not think that I could run non-stop for 2 hours and I don't particualrly enjoy non-stop running anyway. It seems that I can cover the ground easily enough using run/walk and just as fast ( if not faster) . But this programme has been very good for me - and have enjoyed doing it

[yonda1960 Graduate]

That's very interesting Bazza. I suppose it makes sense that with all those little one minute walks you can actually run the 2.5 minute bits faster than by doing it all as one continuous run. I might experiment with this myself and see what happens.

Oh, and good luck with the run in August, 10 miles seems a very long way.

[Bazza1234 Graduate in reply to yonda1960]

I "think" that I hold back just a little bit when I run non-stop. My Number One objective is to FINISH - and not really knowing how much petrol I have in my tank when I start a race/run, I am conservative in my pace. There is a pace that I know I should run long distances at -- but I also find it difficult to keep my running down to that pace. By running at whatever pace I feel comfortable at -- but only for shorter time, is I think what leads to faster times. But anyway, it is not really faster times that I am after -- I just want to avoid the dreaded DNF!!

And yes - 10 miles IS an awfully long way - and a few months ago, I could not even imagine attempting it. But Galloways long distance programmes lead slowly upwards and you have to actually eventually run a longer distance before the raceday -- so that your mind doesn't say -- "you can't do this" -- Oh Yes, I can , I've already done it before !!

[BethRF Graduate]

I've noticed something vaguely similar- I'm in week 8 now, so on the big runs. But, half of the time, my pace per mile is the same as what I was at in week 5/6- when I was walking a lot more. I put this down to needing to pace myself that much more on long runs. I guess when I was walk/running, the actual running bits were that much faster, because I knew I'd have time to recover and only had to keep up that pace for a few minutes, really.

[Nilzed in reply to BethRF]

We all think the program is gonna teach us how to go fast, but it seems to first teach us to go slow enough to go long.