All Things Come ...

... to she who finally gets it all together.

In this case, it is the Galloway Training Method.  This is a method of running races where you run/walk/run and end up not dying at the end or getting injured.  It certainly beats my "run until you can't any more, then limp to the finish" method.

I'd heard about this method and read about it.  Heck, it is even the training method recommended by Disney, my guru in all things.  You'd think if it came out of the mouth of Disney, I'd be all over it.  Finally, I decided I would seriously look into it.  And I did.

A few years ago, Jeff was at the 26.2 with Donna Breast Cancer Marathon.  He was at his booth, signing copies of his book.  I bought one and took it home.  Eventually I read it.  Unfortunately, that was about the extent of my involvement.

A few months later, I decided to try the walk/run method.  Except that I couldn't find a watch that would keep the intervals on a steady schedule without me having to reset the watch.  Besides which, I couldn't hear the beeps unless the watch was wrapped around my ear, which tended to look a little ridiculous.  Since my main focus when jogging is to watch for minuscule twigs that might cause my ankle to freak out and twist thus throwing me to the ground, attempting to hear, reset, and readjust a watch was just not going to work for me.  I kept to my jog-then-give-out strategy.

Last year Molly and I decided to run with a group that was sponsored by a local athletic store.  They had different pace groups, and we decided to stick with a walk/run group.  It would have worked out fine, except their intervals did not work for me.  I looked online and got a interval timer, which I promptly stuck in a drawer.  One day after the group jog, I saw an official Jeff Galloway timer (which was identical to the online one sans the Jeff Galloway name) and bought it.  It joined its brother in the drawer.  Occasionally I took it out to study it, and promptly put it back in the drawer.

Finally things came together.  In January I completed the Tropical 5K with Loren, using the Galloway Method, mainly because she was a pro at using it and I could jog her intervals.  The next week I got out my own timer and used it with my wogging buddies.  I decided to test it out during the 26.2 With Donna Half Marathon.  I had never Galloway-ed further than four miles, but I decided to go for it.

I decided to pre-test it during the 5K the day before. Unfortunately, the timer has somehow gotten reset during travel, but I managed to keep up with that interval, despite having to reset it each interval. Luckily, the 5K was right next to the race expo, so after I finished I walked over to the expo and a nice young man at the Galloway booth helped me reset it (now THAT'S customer service!).

With a test run and a reset timer, I was ready for the big show.  And I did it.  I cut 15 minutes off my time from January (we needn't discuss that finish time), and it was a huge step in the right direction.  Instead of having a good first five miles, and each mile slowing down considerably after that, my Garmin showed that each mile was fairly consistent.  I'm a believer!

And to think, it only took me a few years to figure that out!

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Today's blessings:  Completing projects at Maribeth's; Maribeth furnishing Pei Wei for lunch