The Importance Of Walk Breaks
If you use main running muscles in the same way, step after step, they will fatigue quicker. As the distance increases, the fatigue and damage to the muscles increases dramatically. If, however, you shift your usage of the forward motion muscles, you’ll extend the capacity of each use of the muscle. By interspersing running with walk breaks every few minutes, program participants will reduce the intensity of muscle use early in the run and conserve resources needed for the end of long runs.
Walk breaks allow the main running muscles to continue to perform at requested levels for much longer than if they were used continuously. By shifting back and forth in muscle usage (by shifting from running to walking to running), participants increase total capacity by using more of the resources inside the muscles. In races, participants will be able to work harder to the end, with muscles that have more life and energy. You can run faster at the end, when you ordinarily would have slowed down. This is often the difference between achieving a time goal or not. Many runners have improved their times by adding walk breaks throughout their run.
Walk breaks will also help to speed up recovery time between long runs, races or speed sessions. By building in the recovery breaks early, there is less damage to repair afterward. The earlier you take the walk breaks, the more they will help. Therefore, you need to take walk breaks before significant fatigue sets in—if you wait until you need them, it is too late.
To summarize, walk breaks:
• Must be taken early enough
• Must be taken often enough
• Will keep muscles resilient and strong to the finish
• Will speed recovery from the long runs, races and the marathon
• Will help you run faster if you are trying for a time goal
• Will reduce the chance of injury
The walk break ratios that Jeff has recommended for each pace group are below.
8 minute/mile: Run 4 minutes/walk 35 seconds
9 minute/mile : Run 4 minutes/walk 1 minute
10 minute/mile: Run 3 minutes/walk 1 minute
11 minute/mile Run 2:30 minutes/walk 1 minute
12 minute/mile Run 2 minutes/walk 1 minute
13 minute/mile Run 1 minute/walk 1 minute
14 minute/mile Run 30 seconds/walk 30 seconds
15 minute/mile Run 30 seconds/walk 45 seconds
16 minute/mile Run 30 seconds/walk 60 seconds