One of my favorite rituals leading up to the New York City Marathon is the final long run before race week. Everyone is tapering at this point, and it’s a local tradition to head over to the Queensborough Bridge, or somewhere on 1st Avenue, and run the last 10-11 miles of the marathon course. On the Saturday or Sunday before the race, you can see packs of runners gathering on the route all the way up to the Bronx and then back down into Central Park. Everyone is going through an individual exercise, laying a mental foundation for what will in a week be a much harder, more boisterous run. It’s the final opportunity to practice race strategy under conditions that somewhat approximate the race itself. But more than that, it’s a chance to celebrate the overall experience of training, and your legs are as resilient as they’ve been in months.

During one of these runs a few years ago, I came across a couple women who were practicing race strategy by running intervals. As I settled into my intended 10:00 per mile pace up 1st Avenue, these women were running around a 9:10 pace for about a mile. They would pass me, and then they would stop running and walk for a minute. As they walked, I would pass them. Soon after, they’d pick it back up again, and within a half mile or so they would pass me and surge ahead. So it went all the way from the Willis Avenue Bridge to Central Park. We probably passed each other six or seven times along the marathon route.

Interval Running as a Race Strategy

What I experienced was a deliberate race strategy of interval running, or walk-run racing. I’ve heard about people trying it out in Runner’s World, and the approach evidently stems from the training philosophy of Jeff Galloway, who sees the walk-run strategy as a way to gain mental control over the exhaustion and exertion that overcomes just about everyone during long races. Using this method, runners push themselves a little bit more than a standard race pace or long run pace and then recover once per mile, or once in a defined interval of 8 or 9 minutes or so, by walking. The idea is that over the duration of a race, these two modes average out.

There does seem to be some physiological benefits associated with this strategy, especially if one’s fitness level is not as high as it could be (and whose is?) or if one is recovering from an injury. The walking segment allows the heart rate to recover, and it also releases endorphins, which one can enjoy during the run instead of after it. And there’s something to be said about having an overall positive experience during a race.

Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that I could achieve maximum performance in terms of speed using this method for a marathon. To me, what’s interesting about it is that it’s primarily a response to a mental struggle associated with running. As Galloway explains on his website, many people become ingrained with an idea that walking during a run is a sign of weakness. It doesn’t help that many high school P.E. instructors reinforce this in their “coaching.” I have to admit that I bought into the “you can’t walk while running” canard when I first started began this hobby. I was irrationally terrified that I would lose steam during my run, start walking, and then get stranded. Figuring out for myself that it was okay to walk for a bit and then start running was a major breakthrough, and it allowed me to think about running as a variegated experience that doesn’t always have a linear trajectory.

Given this context, the walk-run approach seems like an interesting one to adopt for a marathon. I haven’t tried it yet, but maybe it’s something to do in the future.

Odds and Ends

That’s about it for this month. I’ve been avoiding the Olympics, ramping up in marathon training, and re-learning how to take in nutrition (and eat properly after long runs). This week, I give a shout out to the roasted garlic cheese curds from Goodale Farms in Riverhead, NY. We got the curds in our bi-weekly CSA, and they provide the perfect dose of salty, savory protein. Try something like this after a long run; you’ll be glad you did.

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Newsletter 14: “Intervals for the Long Haul”