Wednesday, April 20, 2005

How do you choose your marathon training program?

Jeff Galloway says run four days a week, take walk breaks, do long runs.

Bob Glover says to run five, and doesn't really talk about walk breaks.
I like Running Chick's schedule - and she did her first marathon in just over four hours, which kicked ass.

Part of my brain is telling me that the Galloway program is the way to go. He's got a 98 percent success rate.

I've always believed that if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing to excess. And the idea of the Galloway walk break method doesn't appeal to me as much. I like driving myself hard when I run.

I need to decide this and draw it up pretty damn fast. I will probably go for the Galloway - because I would like to run this thing and live to tell the tale. But I'd love any ideas or feedback.

2 comments:

Running Chick said...

I followed Hal Higdon's marathon training program for beginners. I had to modify it a bit to fit in some races I wanted to do (which I counted as 'speed work') and I did all my long runs as close to 'race pace' as possible.

On race day, I ran with a pace group and we walked through most of the water stops.

I still only run four days a week - my legs likes to rest! But I have added in swimming, and soon will be biking too.

Happy to share more details if you have questions, etc!

Riona said...

Thank, Dianna! I'll check out Higdon's book and look at his suggestions. I might indeed ping you with questions - thanks so much!