Talking the Walk

TALKING THE WALK

(July 2002 RW)

Real runners never walk, you say? I used to think so myself, but not anymore. Talking down walking ended for me more than 30 years ago.

Before that I was a typical "real runner." You know the type -- runs in circles at stoplights rather than take one walking step.

Then reports began reaching me about ultrarunners greatly extending their distance range by taking planned rest breaks. The practice struck me as really weird in 1971, but I wasn't above experimenting with weird ideas.

The first test made a believer of me. I entered a 100-mile race, stopped for a few minutes every five miles early on, more often later, and reached 70 before dropping out.

My race was a failure in the sense of not finishing it, but a great eye-opener in another way. This 70 miles more doubled my previous longest distance.

Plus the pace was faster than I could have run steadily (in the highly unlikely event I could have run this far without stopping). And recovery came much faster than it ever had after much shorter but uninterrupted races.

I've praised and promoted walking for runners ever since. And I've defended its good name against critics who claim that walk breaks make runs less real.

In certain running circles, walk is a four-letter word. Reacting to the growing popularity of walk breaks, some purist runners have taken to equating this practice with cheating. They claim that interrupting runs with walks is only for the untalented and undedicated.

If you're tempted to think that walking is wimping out, consider who does this and why. The benefits and beauties of running's closest cousin are many and varied:

1. Adding distance. Walk breaks came down to marathoners from above, from ultrarunners such as Tom Osler. He was among the first to speak well of this practice, saying in his 1978 Serious Runner's Handbook that well-placed walks would instantly double the distance anyone could run nonstop.

2. Adding speed. This is the traditional use of interval training -- breaking the run into faster segments with brief rests in between. Last year my friend Bernie Greene from Maryland switched to shorter, faster training with walk breaks because the intervals eased his chronic knee pain. Within six months his 5-K race time dropped from 25 to 20 minutes.

3. Easing efforts. Even the easiest steady run might not be easy enough. Interspersing walks can speed recovery from the hardest racing and training, and from injury or illness. It also can make chronic pain more tolerable. This happened with another friend of mine, Tim Zbikowsky from Minnesota, whose arthritic hip reacted much better to run-walk than to run-every-step.

4. Beginning or returning. New and lapsed runners advance quickly and safely by mixing walks into their runs -- or, at first, by adding short runs to what's still mostly a walk. I published such a plan in the April 2002 Runner's World, starting newcomers and returnees with as little as one-minute runs separated by five-minute walks. Budd Coates, fitness director at RW's parent company Rodale, advocates a similar schedule [ADD LINK?].

5. Warming up and cooling down. We see all manner of fancy exercises for doing both. Perhaps the best is the simplest: walk a few minutes before and after each run. Some of America's best young runners, those at Stanford University, habitually walk their first quarter-mile each day. This eases the transition from resting to running, and walking works just as well later for the reverse, run-to-rest shift.

6. Substituting and supplementing. Walking is an effective, if too often forgotten, cross-training activity. Two months before his 77th birthday, John Keston became the oldest marathoner to break 3-1/2 hours (running 3:22:59). His training: run 14 to 17 miles every third day, with five- to six-mile walks the other days.

7. Replacing running. We can't all keep run forever. Ted Corbitt couldn't. When severe asthma stopped the Olympian's running, he switched to long-distance walking. Last summer at age 82, he walked a six-day race and averaged 50 miles daily. Corbitt could have adopted other activities, but he found that walking most closely matched the earth-below, sky-above feelings of a good run.

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