Developing Your Own Walking Training Program, Part 1
While walking for fitness is a great way to stay in shape, burn calories, and keep your mind sharp and clear, when you’re training for an endurance event (a half-marathon or longer), those simple morning walks won’t get you prepared. Develop a plan for your training that includes building endurance, adding muscle, increasing your flexibility, and incorporating good nutrition into your lifestyle. With a well-thought-out training plan, you can go from couch potato to marathon in about four months, as long as you make the commitment and stick to it. And after all, that’s what these events are all about — you’re devoting your efforts to something greater than yourself, physically, mentally, and financially.
First, evaluate where you are on a physical level. Do you have a sedentary job and confine your exercise to occasional relaxed saunters of 30 minutes or less? Then you’re a beginner and will be starting out slowly to avoid injury and to keep yourself motivated. If you exercise for an hour or so three to five times a week, then you’re an intermediate, and the goal is to increase your fitness level until you can comfortably walk the entire distance in a manageable time. You’re advanced if you exercise for an hour or more every day, walk more than five miles at a time regularly, and have done events in the past. Your goal is to bring yourself back into peak conditioning.
Next, time yourself. Walk at your normal, comfortable pace for a mile and see how long it takes you. Divide 60 by that number. In other words, if it takes you 15 minutes to walk a mile, you would be walking four miles per hour (60/15 = 4). If you don’t know how far a mile is, count your steps for one minute and then divide by 30. That will give you your time. For example, if you walk 90 steps in one minute, that’s three miles per hour (90/30 = 3). Look at the length of your event and figure out how long it will take you at your current level, keeping in mind that unless you’ve been training already, you won’t be able to keep up your normal pace for a long period. If you’re planning to do a marathon (26.5 miles) and you walk three miles an hour, that’s almost nine hours, not taking into account rest stops. In reality you’re probably looking at an 11- or 12-hour day. Don’t let that frighten you — by following your training plan, you’ll shave hours off that time.
Now that you know where you are, think about where you want to be. I once knew a trainer, also an Iron Man triathlete, who said he could never figure out why people didn’t run faster marathons because the faster you do it, the less time you suffer. While he has a point, the reality is that most of us aren’t able to run an under-three-hour marathon because we can’t devote that much time to training and we all have different body types that move at our own paces.
Make your goal something reasonable. If you currently walk three miles per hour, set a goal to make it three-and-a-half by the time your event rolls around. That would take you from nine hours of walking down to eight. You’ll also find when your conditioning is top-notch that you don’t need or want to spend as much time at the rest stops, so now you’ve gone from an 11-hour day to around nine. Someone in excellent condition should be able to manage a four mph pace without too much trouble, but it depends on how well you train and where you started to begin with.
As you train, measure your progress. If by month three you haven’t broken your goal pace, don’t worry about it. Scale your ambitions back and be happy with your achievement. For most of us, the goal shouldn’t be to set a new record or finish first, but to finish in a reasonable time while staying healthy and comfortable.
Before you begin laying out your training schedule, a health exam might be in order. This is a must if you’re going from a completely sedentary lifestyle, if you’re more than a few pounds overweight, or if you’ve got any health problems. Your doctor can give you recommendations to help you make your training safe and effective.
Next time, planning your schedule.
At almost 45 years old, I’m training for my first marathon. Our team does all their training at run to walk ratios. I have exercise induced asthma so I’m only up to a 4:1 ratio, but I’m still faster than most people that try to run the whole time. I have a friend that never goes above a 5:1 ratio and she is one of the fastest runners I know. A few years ago this would have seemed like a really weird way to train, but I was younger and weighed a few pounds less than I do now. I could go out for miles and just RUN-RUN-RUN. But now ratio training is the only way I’ll be able to complete my event.
Hey Lynn,
It is much harder to train with a few extra years and pounds to carry along.
(I know whereof I speak on that one!) Ratio training sounds like an interesting way to compensate for that. Is your ratio based on distance or time? I’d like to hear more about it.
I’ve never been a runner, but when I train, I can walk a long distance as fast as many people can run it, and without the added stress on my joints. Good luck with the marathon!
Hi Marilyn,
When I’m training with my marathon team, we train by time such as 48 minutes – right now I can do around 4 1/2 miles in that time. I do longer runs on my own – 6, 8 or 10 miles. But I’m always doing a run to walk ratio. My first half marathon is December 7th and my first full marathon is January 11th. I hope to be up to a 5:1 or 6:1 ratio for both events.
Thanks, Lynn. Anybody else have any training techniques that work well? Feel free to share!