but once I could cover the distance I wanted & do it five days a week I just found it really frustrating & gave up the walking bits.
That's kind of what I did a week or two ago when running eight miles. In the middle of it, on a bridge over the Mississippi, I stopped to stretch using a 4-to-5-foot-high handrail/suicide prevention barrier, then walked 100 feet or so, then ran some more. Really refreshed me
. But I don't think I could do the continuous run-walk-run interval method recommended by Galloway, or even the walk-run-walk approach unrecommended by Lomad, unless perhaps I was doing a marathon without sufficient preparation, or attempting to increase distance on my long and slow (steady pace) run. The whole point of running a certain distance seems to be to see if you can run that whole distance
. When I've had to stop to walk on the last few runs, it definitely got me out of my zone
, and made it hard to start running again
, like Nick and Lomad said, but then, those stops weren't intentional or planned; I had to stop because my left knee was feeling strained
, so I guess it's not the same method
. But I am thinking of using this method as therapy while my knee recovers
. Yesterday I could only run 1.5 miles before it acted up
. I read an article that said not to stop running while working through ITBS, but rather to continue to run up to the distance where you start to feel it and then stop
. So if 1.5 to 2 miles is my current limit, perhaps I could consider walking a bit after every .5 miles or so and see if I can progressively squeeze out an extra .5 to 1 mile of running until I'm back to running 5-6 miles comfortably, and then start increasing the distance again, but more gradually this time, like just one mile per month, instead of five within three weeks
, and perhaps schedule in a few walk breaks until the new max distance gets comfortable
. (P.S., how's my use of emoticons?)