The Experiment

The experiment: Training using the Galloway method

The subject: Yours truly

The location: Long Beach Street Laboratory

The test: The 2009 Long Beach Marathon

The result and conclusion: Read below

It was an experiment in which I was the sole specimen to be tested. At the start of Spring 2009, I began to step up my training by running with the Wrigley River Runners group when they started their Saturday morning sessions. This was after recovering (up to a certain point), from the inner ankle tendon tear that I suffered last October during the Long Beach Half Marathon. A couple of weeks before the Wrigley group wrapped up their Saturday training, I rejoined the ‘A Running Experience Club’ marathon and half marathon training group which I have been with since its inception six years ago. It was during the first 12 mile run of the AREC season that I experienced my highest high of the year when I managed to squeeze myself in between four vivacious women and finished the run with them. A few days later in mid-week, I experienced my lowest low when I tweaked the problematic ankle tendon and had to walk the following Saturday using trekking poles for balance and support.

It was then that the experiment of one began. For me to be able to keep on running, I felt the need to reinvent the way I train. It was sad to separate myself from the new friends I gained from the earlier weeks of training, but I had no other choice. I was resigned to having to run by myself, which I didn’t like too much because my purpose in coming back to this group year after year was to find people to run and pace with to make the miles go a little easier. See, my running friends? I have an ulterior motive after all and that is to use you to make me run better. But, it seemed like I was going to be back with my lonesome until I bumped into Linda one day in mid-run. I’ve known her for about four years but never ran with before except for brief periods along the course. Even though she had a different run to walk ratio, she was kind enough to stay with me that day with my four minute run to one minute walk ratio. Thus started my reinvention.

I used to do a 5:1 minute run to walk ratio occasionally in the past and a week after my trekking poles walk, I was able to do a 3:1 ratio, then increased it to 4:1 on that first day I ran with Linda. After a few days, I tried to go back up to 5:1 but in spite of running an extra minute each interval, my overall pace was slower. So I went back to 4:1 and it worked very well in the ensuing weeks that I trained with Linda, who decided to forego her usual 7:1 ratio.

Then Rick, whom I’ve known for three years, lent me his book “Born To Run”, part of which the author talks about reinventing his running due to chronic injuries not unlike mine. The book served as an inspiration to my own reinvention.

This brings us to the present time and the events of the past weekend. The marathon – a distance which I thought I would never be able to run again. After waffling back and forth the past three weeks, then with much encouragement from my AREC and other friends, I swapped my half marathon entry for the full marathon, knowing full well that in case something happens to my ankle during the race, there would be a lot of red-shirted medical personnel along the course. Linda also made me promise her that if I felt I could not continue, I would avail myself of the medical assistance. There was no need. I finished my 26^th marathon and my balky ankle and my reinvented self survived the experience. I’ve never been so happy finishing a ‘slow’ marathon as I am now!

So you may not have seen me with beakers, test tubes, and Petri dishes along the training and race course, but this experience was an experiment nonetheless, and one I can call a resounding success! Borrowing the phrase from a poster in my living room - “The race is not always to the swift but to those who keep on running”J. And my friends, although I was never fleet of foot, I found a way to keep on running.