Galloways "Magic Mile" for race pacing
 

My wife has one of this guys (Jeff Galloway) books that she used to get ready for her marathon this year. While I think some of the stuff he says is whacko, this seems like a decent concept to determine race pacing. I read this on the Active.com website this morning:

Quote:

Here’s how to do the the "magic mile" time trial (MM) 1. On your MM time trial, don’t run all-out from the start—just a little faster than you have been running. 2. Go to a track, or other accurately measured course. One mile is 4 laps around a track. 3. Warm up by walking for 5 minutes, then running a minute and walking a minute for 6-10 minutes, then jogging an easy 800 meter (half mile or two laps around a track) 4. Do 4 acceleration-gliders. These are listed in the "Drills" chapter of my books. Don’t sprint. 5. Walk for 3-4 minutes 6. Start the MM. Run fast—for you—for 4 laps. 7. Start the stopwatch at the beginning of the mile and stop it at the end of the 4th lap. 8. Warm down by reversing the warmup. 9. A school track is the best venue. Don’t use a treadmill because they tend to be notoriously un-calibrated, and often tell you that you ran farther or faster than you really did. 10. On each successive MM, try to adjust pace in order to run a faster time than you’ve run before 11. Use the "Galloway Prediction Formula" above to see what time is predicted in the goal races How hard should I run the test During the first month of the program, you could run the magic mile once a week, in the middle of a Tuesday or Thursday run. The first one should be only slightly faster than you normally run. With each successive MM, pick up the pace and beat your previous best time. By the 4th one, you should be running fairly close to your current potential. Galloway’s Prediction Formula: Take your one mile time trial and adjust to find a potential fast pace for you, in each race: 5K—add 33 seconds 10K—multiply by 1.15 half marathon—multiply by 1.2 marathon—multiply by 1.3 Example: You ran a fast (for you) one mile time trial and the time was 10:00 10:33 is your current potential for a very hard pace in a 5K—per mile 11:30 is your current potential for a very hard pace in a 10K—per mile 12:00 is your current potential for a very hard pace in a half marathon—per mile 13:00 is your current potential for a very hard pace in a marathon—per mile Long run pace: add two minutes to the predicted marathon pace: 15 min/mi

I ran a hard-ish mile last week and finished in 7:13, although I think I may have gone a little bit faster than that, as the iPod is less accurate at higher speeds. Given his formula, that would put me at a 7:46/mile pace for a 5K equaling 24:05 5K. I turned in a 23:53 the other day for our 5K challenge, but think I could go a bit faster than that on a flat course. Not a bad prediction, really.

I would be interested in hearing how this formula works for anyone else that is running right now.

good tip, my friend. i am going to do this tonight, and report back tomorrow. i have nothing better to do anyway, b/c i am not lifting since a certain undisclosed lifting buddy of mine totally wussed out on me.

Interesting, I might try it sometime this week.

How did your wife do in the marathon? Did I miss a report already?

Dude, I'm tired.

Farrah, it went very well. Here is my mini-report:

http://cougarguard.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12201

I like Galloway's book(s) a lot, especially his run-walk technique. I've run 4 marathons with it. I'm not very fast, but it's effective for me and the recovery is extremely fast.

Do you mind me asking about your marathon times Solon? Have they improved each time using Jeff's program?

I've thought more than once about giving his technique a try, but I just can't bring myself to walk that often. Jeff ran a 1/2 that I also ran back in April, and I was just behind him until about mile 9. He would stop to walk about every 45 seconds, which I thought was weird. After mile 9 or so, I didn't see him again. I don't know if he dropped out or what. I couldn't find his time in the results.

being of lightning speed, i clocked a 10:03 time. Rounding down to an even 10 minutes, i am right on par with the example in your recitation.

Well then I expect to see a finishing time of 5:40 for the Redding Marathon in a couple of months.

And my piano teacher will be so happy to hear that I can still do a recitation after all these years. I had no idear.

I've definitely improved over time, but it hasn't been a steady progression since each marathon was pretty different. My best time is a 4:25 - just over 10-minute miles - and I'm pretty sure I could have beat it on my last run (4:40) but the weather was pretty rough (Harrisburg, PA in November) and there was no timing mat at the starting line (so I lost 5 minutes in the crowd leading up to the starting line).

I'll run a sub four-hour someday, but the most important thing to me is a quick recovery time - which I think is the best feature of the Galloway technique. I almost always have to work on Monday, so I really don't want to kill myself off during a Sunday run. My goal is consistency, so I just strive for a steady pace and maybe a little bit of a negative split. Besides, I'm just running for fun (and if you saw my thick body you'd know that I just can't be a serious runner). This is why I like Galloway. I suppose it might work for more serious or fast runners, but I wouldn't know.

I usually run 6 miles a day, and walk for 45-60 seconds at the halfway point. On long runs (13+), I run for 9:15 and walk for 45, and end up with about a ten-minute mile (depending on terrain). I have a good friend who runs 20 minutes and walks 5 on trail runs - and he's an ultramarathoner (pretty fast too), but doesn't do it at all on street runs.