Ever had the strange experience of getting passed by the same person repeatedly during the course of a single road race? That’s the Galloway.
The run-walk-run method, that is, literally trademarked by Jeff Galloway, the running guru and former Olympian who died in February, which is when I learned that what I thought was dogging it is in fact an innovative and interesting way to break up the miles and alleviate the psychological strain of pounding them.
Flipping through “Galloway’s Book on Running” (revised third edition, Shelter Publications) a few hours before the early evening run of the Shelter Island 10K on Saturday, I settled on a plan — run for three minutes, rest for 30 seconds, repeat. Because without it, I wouldn’t have tried at all, having started running again after a long, cold, sedentary winter only two months ago, settling into two-mile outings as close to every other day as I could manage. Far from in shape, in other words.
Reaction? Thirty seconds to recover was clearly not enough. And the three-minute runs should have been two, given my struggle to maintain a decent pace.
One downside, the pause in running tends to make any knee or hip soreness surface like impurities after a detox. And around the halfway mark, simply starting up again after walking becomes one heckuva heave-to.
The guy from whom I’d first heard of this technique, also in his 50s and similarly on the bodily rebound, took up five-minute run segments and one-minute walks. He cruised right by me at mile 4.
He’s also the one who gave me a timer that beeps off the intervals, religiously followed, a handy little device that I could conspicuously hold aloft to inspect and thus signal to other runners that my walking was strategy, not exhaustion, when it was both in equal parts.
From the cellulite-legged to the stooped and graying, others passed me by too, often only to come back in a kind of cosmic seesawing that was oddly collegial. As was the entire race, with its spectators in lawn chairs clanging cowbells, card tables straining under the weight of clear liquids of a substantial proof, a wedding reception of swells serenaded by piano jazz and sax, the cups of fresh Greenport Harbor I.P.A. gratis postrace.
And once you reach the Village of Dering Harbor and its waterfront, the course offers what has to be the most beautiful stretch of road racing in the country.
Or maybe I’m just looking back fondly because after my slog, my time was only 28 seconds slower than the last time I ran Shelter Island, when I was five years younger and 15 pounds lighter.
The Galloway is running’s answer to the Atkins diet. It shouldn’t work, but it does.