• Works for me •
[<2 MIN READ])
I came across him doing online marathon-training research: Jeff Galloway. He died 25 February 2026 (at the age of 80), so I’m a little late to the keyboard, but he himself made a big deal out of slower (ostensibly) being plenty fast enough. I’m talking primarily about the run-walk strategy that he popularized (less about the timing of this piece).
I have a fraternal twin brother out in LA who ran the LA Marathon more than 10 years before I ever started thinking about running (me in 2012). I do remember thinking during my first race, ‘Don’t stop running. Don’t walk.’ but that first marathon in 2013 was a bugger. I had no choice by mile 20. Brother shared the account of reaching the finish line of his LA wiped out. When he started walking, a spectator literally yelled, “Don’t stop! Keep moving!” which he credits for helping him finish better than he thought he could.
When I found Jeff Galloway online, I started thinking about how I might incorporate his technique into my own racing. I gave myself permission to walk as a racing strategy early in my marathon tally. What I noticed the first time was that the numbness that had overtaken my legs went away immediately as I felt blood flow reinfuse my capillaries. That made it easy to recognize the value for me. Numb legs seems counterproductive, n’est-ce pas?
Since then, I’ve developed my own strategy. Galloway was very structured, basing his amount of walking precisely upon the amount of running an individual was doing. I’m simple minded. I just walk whenever I reach a fueling station. It’s easier for drinking anyway. Granted, I walk longer as I reach the end of a race, but I can attest that I continued to PR progressively for 10 years. This was not every single marathon, bien sûr, but my annual average for sure. And guess what? The chip time is agnostic of how much walking any competitor does. It only knows the finish time.
I still proudly use my own version of Jeffing for every single marathon.
–CtCloser (Calvinthe) “Negative Split or Positive Splat” #dothedue (iCandybyWangC.com)
FINE PRINT ¶Text by Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-published: Facebook Shawmont Running Club (ZY Weekly Newsletter 3/28/26), Shawmont Running Club website, Ruminations by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Rumination with added caption, duration, and enumeration.
Go up one level
iCandybyWangC 