Performance Advantage Coaching by Dr Will O'Connor

The run-walk method is nothing new to running, and a lot of its notoriety can be credited to legendary running coach Jeff Galloway. However, I struggled to find scientific reasoning behind the run-walk method as well as any data on runners going under 3 hours using this method. Personally, I have successfully used the run-walk method to run a 2:45 marathon and 8hr 38min 100km. What is Run-Walk? The method works as the name suggests, you run for a period then walk for a short period to recover and delay the onset of fatigue. The theory suggests that you’ll be able to run faster at the end of the race and thus have faster overall finishing time compared to if you had tried to run the whole time and were forced slow down at the end due to fatigue. The Science of Run-Walk The Brain Running requires the brain to send neurological impulses to the muscles that are needed to propel you forward in a running motion. Both these neurological signals and the muscles they activate can become...

I had an amazing run at the Trail Trilogy 100km ultramarathon. Overall, I am incredibly happy with my effort and I am glad I implemented my 19-1 run-walk strategy, which I believe saved me on multiple occasions. HOWEVER, I felt like everything went to plan except for two sections. Looking back through my data, those two sections do stick out at me and I’d like to show them to you. Here is the raw output from TrainingPeaks, the software I use to analyse training files. To the untrained eye, it may look like a bit of a mess, but with a little background information, you can unlock a world of information. I’ll show you. Everyone slows down in an ultra First, if you clear out some of the excess data and only show heart rate and running power, you can see that I slowed down over the duration of the race. The rate at which I slowed down fits nicely into the results published in a 2004 study titled “Changes in Running Speeds in a 100 km Ultramarathon Race” (read here). The res...