I know as runners we often look down upon running.
Walking is not running and for some people, it doesn’t even feel like you’re doing much of anything.
If you start a run and then have to or want to walk, a little voice inside your head might say that you’re cheating or giving up or you aren’t fit enough to be a “real runner.”
But despite what your ego is telling you, walking can actually be your super power to better running. That’s right, walking can make you a better runner.
I know that many runners out there are probably rolling their eyes at the thought of walking instead of running, but I’ll explain why they are missing out.
The Research on Walking for Runners
The research says that aerobic development peaks between 30-90 minutes of low-intensity exercise.
You are building capillaries, increasing your plasma and blood volume, building up your heart and leg muscles and a whole lot more when you work out aerobically.
But when you are just starting out, 30 minutes of running is far beyond most people’s fitness.
That’s when walking can fill in the gaps.
You might start out with 5 minutes of brisk walking, then run for a minute or two (depending on your fitness level) and repeat. Your actual time spent running might only tally up to ten or 15 minutes, but the time you are building your aerobic fitness is far longer, and hopefully pushes you into that 30-90 minute zone.
The walk breaks allow you to catch your breath, rest your legs a little, and lessen the pounding on your muscles, tendons and joints.
Running is a high-impact exercise and it takes a long time for your body parts to be tough enough to handle thousands upon thousands of steps of high impact.
But if you methodically walk in between short minutes of running, you can get 2-3 times as much aerobic exercise in a far more gradual and gentler way.
This allows you to progress faster than if you just run as long as you can all at once.
The key to making the run/walk method so valuable is to always walk before you get fatigued from the run section. This allows you to keep great form, recover almost instantly, and usually makes it easier to get running again, instead of it being such a chore.
You’ll want to keep your walk intervals nice and brisk to keep your heart rate up and to keep the aerobic work honest.
This is another reason to begin your walks before you are tired from the run.
If the run section is depleting you, you are more likely to shuffle along during the walk. Not to mention, relaxing too much during your walks can make the transition back to running less appealing.
How to Implement Run Walk Training
You’ll gradually want to increase your ratio of running to walking until you are doing all running. For example if you’ve started out with 5 minutes of walking, 2 minutes of running, you’ll want to move up to 4 minutes walking and 3 minutes running, and so on, until you can run an entire mile without walking.
At that point, you might still want to take walk breaks each mile or your goal could be to eventually phase out the walk.
Depending on your fitness level, this could take anywhere from several weeks to several months.
Once you build up to being able to get into the peak zone by just running, you might not need to keep up the walk part. The reason for this is because at a certain point of fitness, walking is not going to give you the same stimulus as just running. Once a 30-45 minute run feels easy without walk breaks, your running will progress faster without the walks, in general.
One exception, however, is your long run. If you are trying to build that up, a good strategy is to keep a walk in there, even if you are running 30 to 45 minutes on your week day runs without stopping. For example, you might do 20 minutes of running with 2 minutes of walking three times for a total of 64 minutes on the weekend. By keeping the walk in there for 3-4 weeks on your long run, you can be sure that you are not overstressing your body and are better prepared for the distance.
But once you are ready to drop the walk during your runs, that doesn’t mean that you should stop walking! I’ll explain how walking can make even experienced and elite runners better than ever, right after this.
Experienced runners sometimes suffer from a stubborn belief that only running will make them better runners and that’s simply not true. Walk breaks can help make a recovery run feel better and be less stressful on the skeletal system, so don’t let your ego stop you from taking a beneficial walk break on a particularly junky-feeling Wednesday run.
Walking is one of the best cross training activities because it’s easy, gentle, free, and very similar to running. Instead of a pure rest day after a race or a hard day of running, you might want to try a 30 minute walk. You will likely recover better and you’ll boost your aerobic fitness and metabolism at the same time. And that is something that every kind of runner can benefit from.
How about using walking to boost your mileage? If you’d like to get the benefits of more running miles, but aren’t ready for running doubles or lengthening your runs, go take a walk! You’re stimulating your metabolism in nearly the same way as a run without the downsides.
Another great time to add in a walk is at the end of any run. Pro runner and past Run to the Top guest Andrew Colley told me that he always takes several minutes to walk after all of his runs as the final stage of his cool downs. This allows the transition from exercise to normal life to go smoother and helps begin the recovery process faster, all before hitting the shower.
Walking is also perfect when you are returning from injury or a significant break in training. If you had to stop running for more than two weeks or the injury is particularly difficult, the run walk method can prevent re-injury and help you transition back to normal training faster than running alone.
Now, I know what the veteran runners are thinking here, and you might be saying something like this: “I’ve been running for years, why on earth do I need to start walking every 10 minutes coming back from my hamstring injury? I’m in a hurry to get back to training because my goal race is just around the corner and this walking business is such a waste of time. Certainly not for me!”
Well, actually, if you’re in a hurry, this might actually be the faster road to recovery, as counter-intuitive as that may seem. That’s because when returning from a difficult or persistent injury, the injured area is likely to be sensitive and prone to re-injury.
When we hurry back to running, we tend to ignore the mild to moderate pain signals, which causes the body to compensate for the injury by changing how you run to lessen the pain. This could be an obvious limp or it could be completely invisible as the body shifts the pressure from the injured area to another muscle group that is not prepared to handle the load.
This means that you could potentially be stressing other areas of your body to compensate and set off a chain of injuries. This is why sprained ankles lead to IT band and knee pain and strained hamstrings might lead to calf trouble.
Not ideal.
But by implementing a run walk, you will help take pressure off your structural system while allowing you to get out and run for a greater total time while transitioning back to normal training.
The concept is exactly the same as intervals on your speed day. If you are trying to run a faster 5k, for example, you don’t just head out the door and run 3.1 miles as fast as you can each week. You break it up into intervals with rest breaks. Over many weeks, you can extend your race pace and shorten your breaks until you are running the 5k faster than ever.
It works the same way when your goal is to lengthen your runs.
Now, if your ego is still getting in the way of a walk, it might help to know that top elites will utilize the run/walk method when coming back from injury and running is their job! Their egos and their livelihoods are invested in getting back to running as fast as possible and often the best way to do that is to walk.
So if you’ve been injured and you are back to running, but progress is slow and pain is still there, try breaking up the run with some walking for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.
And then there are those runners that have discovered that the run/walk strategy actually works so well that they never give it up. Not even on race day. Olympian and legendary coach Jeff Galloway has popularized the run/walk method as a lifestyle and a race day strategy. The idea is that by adding purposeful walks to your running, you can recover long enough to run faster or longer than you could without them.
Of course, that does mean that you would need to run faster during the run portion to make up for the walking sections to get the same results as running the entire race, but for some runners, it’s more than worth it. And Jeff Galloway is proof that his method works for even the fastest runners. He ran his 1980 marathon PR of 2:16:35 by taking brief walk breaks every mile.
And finally, because walking is so universal, you can share it with friends and family who might not be as fit as you are. Getting your family to go for a walk after a meal or a holiday dinner is an enjoyable way to spend time together and sneak in a little fitness at the same time. It shouldn’t entirely replace your running, of course, but it can certainly enrich your life in other ways.
Human beings were designed to walk a lot more than most of us actually do in our modern lives and by incorporating more walking in our lives, we all can become better runners.
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