Jeff Galloway v Hal Higdon

G-Money

I'm aiming to do the half marathon in September and I was planning on using the Hal Higdon Novice Half Marathon training plan but ever since listening to an interview with Jeff Galloway, I'm tempted to use his run/walk/run technique.

From looking at his half marathon programme, it's quite long (19 weeks) whereas Hal's is 12 weeks and would tie in nicely as it's about 13 weeks to the half marathon.

I noticed the cut-off for the half marathon is 3hrs 15 minutes so I definitely want to make it around faster than that! From listening to Jeff Galloway, his programmes often seem to result in reasonably fast times. I'm also quite slow at the moment with my pace being about 13 min/mile. I'm also not sure how Jeff's programme would tie in with two training sessions per week at the running club where I'd probably need to be taking walking breaks in order to stick to his programme.

Just wondering if anyone here has used Jeff Galloway's programme and what they thought of it? I know H2T has used it and seemed to like it. Just wondering if others have too?

Thanks!

Pisco Sour

I actually asked this question about gallowalking before I started training for my marathon. I opted against it in the end by might be some useful info in here.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=62564750

TFBubendorfer

In my personal opinion, Galloway is a fraud.

Woddle

I don't know too much about Galloway but I did think he made alot of sense when I listened to him on marathon talk, it's a 2 parter and this link is just part 1.
I think for beginners or people carrying a bit of weight his programs could be worth checking as according to him it greatly reduces the risk of injury.
http://www.marathontalk.com/archive/2011/3/23/episode-63-jeff-galloway-part-one.html

G-Money

Yeah I listened to his interview on Marathon Talk and that's what got me seriously considering it. I know I found the GIR 10k quite tough and that was only half the distance and I walked 3.5k of it. Although hopefully this time I won't be standing around for an hour beforehand in the blistering sun.

I think these other race events start at a more reasonable time of 10am.

TFBubendorfer

Scott Douglas, the D in the P&D books, wrote a brilliant article about his attempt at Galloway walk breaks. Unfortunately, it does not seem available any more.

In short, it was not successful, but what I found much more disturbing are the claims he managed to debunk with a minimum of research. Basically, Galloway lied repeatedly about the great times people had achieved with his method.

If I find the document again, I'll link to it again. I should have saved it.

You are, of course, perfectly entitled to make up your own opinion and disagree with me.

Pisco Sour

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

Scott Douglas, the D in the P&D books, wrote a brilliant article about his attempt at Galloway walk breaks. Unfortunately, it does not seem available any more.

In short, it was not successful, but what I found much more disturbing are the claims he managed to debunk with a minimum of research. Basically, Galloway lied repeatedly about the great times people had achieved with his method.

If I find the document again, I'll link to it again. I should have saved it.

You are, of course, perfectly entitled to make up your own opinion and disagree with me.

I think I read that article myself when I was researching Gallowalking. I recall him mentioning how stupid he felt when he would run past somebody, then 10 seconds later he would have to stop for his walk break, and so that guy he passed would go straight past him again. Then 3 minutes later he went passed him again. Remember him saying he felt self-concious and felt ridiculous.

Did this guy do the gallowalking in training though or just as a one off in the race?

TFBubendorfer

04072511 wrote: »

I think I read that article myself when I was researching Gallowalking. I recall him mentioning how stupid he felt when he would run past somebody, then 10 seconds later he would have to stop for his walk break, and so that guy he passed would go straight past him again. Then 3 minutes later he went passed him again. Remember him saying he felt self-concious and felt ridiculous.

Did this guy do the gallowalking in training though or just as a one off in the race?

Yes, that's the one. To be fair, feeling ridiculous wouldn't be a great reason not to follow the Galloway method if it worked, but there were more serious issues.

He was planning on doing the gallowalking in a race but got injured in training so the race never happened.
He blamed the walking breaks. :rolleyes:

tHE vAGGABOND

If you care what complete strangers think of you in a marathon then you have more problems than what training plan to run IMHO.

Also maybe Im a suspicious person, but someone else flogging books and training plans [P&D] slagging off someone who is in the same market segment raises alarm bells, "that other guy is crap, buy my book instead".

I know I played around with the run walk stuff in the lead up to connemara half - and used it in my training for it [not walking every mile, but for a bit every 3 to 4 miles] and I thought it was brilliant.

At the start line I was planning to use it - but in the end I did not as it happens, but that is another story!

Pisco Sour

tHE vAGGABOND wrote: »

Also maybe Im a suspicious person, but someone else flogging books and training plans [P&D] slagging off someone who is in the same market segment raises alarm bells, "that other guy is crap, buy my book instead".

Ah now, don't go all Lance Armstrong on us!

But you do make a valid point.

TFBubendorfer

tHE vAGGABOND wrote: »

Also maybe Im a suspicious person, but someone else flogging books and training plans [P&D] slagging off someone who is in the same market segment raises alarm bells, "that other guy is crap, buy my book instead".

Sure, but personally I'd be even more suspicious of the other guy who has been shown to be making up things. I don't think Scot Douglas is too worried about losing potential readers to Galloway though. They're aiming at different target groups.

I found the following entry. It was one of the incidents SD was referring to.


I've been reading all this crap about Galloway and now I guess I'm a pawn in the debate so I just have to respond. In his first response to the question by Rich Englehart Galloway states:

"The winner of this year's Sunburst Marathon walked a few steps every two miles."

Just to set the record straight - I was the winner of the Sunburst Marathon mentioned by Jeff Galloway in the Runner's World interview. Galloway tried to use me to support his silly racing strategy by saying that I walked to win the race. He obviously picked it up from the report on the South Bend Tribune's website, which had a few errors in it. For one thing - I don't walk. I come to a complete stop. For another thing - I would never take these breaks while I was actually trying to run a fast race. He then mentions that runners improve by 13 minutes! Funny that the Sunburst Marathon was more than 13 minutes slower than my best. (Maybe he got his directions on the13 minute factor turned around.)

I was using the race as a training run and what I told the newspaper I did was run the race at 5:30 pace every 3 miles then stop and take a break after each set - 30 seconds during the first half, a minute the second half and jog in from 24 miles. The reason I did it that way was so I could recover from the run and continue on with my training that week. I've done many marathons in that manner for training to get the effect of doing long runs hard without trashing your body.

Here's what the SB Tribune printed:

Wilson, who ate a cheesecake immediately after the race to help his body recover quickly enough to run a marathon today in Iowa, has an unorthodox method of running. He'll go hard for two or three miles, then walk to give his legs a rest. He'll go hard again, then walk again -- throughout the entire race.

"You have to give your legs a break,'' Wilson said. "Twenty miles or so non-stop can do a lot of damage to your legs.''

By the way, I didn't do another marathon the next day. I thought it was the next day but it was the next week so I just did 30 miles (with stops!) easy instead. And yes that cheese cake was gooood!

All my best marathons from my PR of 2:18:30 to sub 2:30 were all RUN without stopping or walking.

Steve

tHE vAGGABOND

They're aiming at different target groups.

Not really tbh - I would argue that the vast majority of sales of those kinds of books go to gob****es like me, who get into running and buy every running book they hear people taking about :eek:

The number who do research, and only buy one or two books only as they are the only ones they need is tiny in this day and age IMHO

TFBubendorfer

By the way, I may sound like I passionately hate walking, but that's not the case at all.

I know exactly where you're coming from. Running 26+ miles sounds like incredibly long when you've never done it before and if you read someone who claims to make this so much easier then of course you will be interested.

For my first marathon, I did exactly that. I found some guy's training plan on the internet and he promised that with walk breaks, it will be much easier. By some chance, this guy was Galloway and I somewhat followed the training plan, though I missed quite a few of the workouts.

I didn't have a good marathon. And my second one was even worse. That's when I switched strategy and I haven't done walking breaks since. Believe me, it is so much easier to stay in the running rhythm, but that's something I had to find out for myself and I sure don't blame you if you want to find out for yourself as well.