Walking the Aid Stations in an Ironman
I post I wrote "elsewhere."
We've been recommending a run/walk strategy for our athletes and at our "Four Keys" pre-race talk for years. It works and these are our thoughts:
Run through the aid station to the last water, gel, coke, sportsdrink guy/gal, whatever your needs are for that aid station. Get it and walk for 30 steps:
- Last means you're not tempted to walk allllll the way through the whole aid station. They can be big. You're now, hopefully, walking among people who are running = a reminder to start running vs keep walking like everyone else.
- 30 steps is a hard, non-negotiable number that removes you from the decision to start running again. 30 steps takes about 15-18". Maybe later in the race you start running after 30" vs 30 steps. Whatever, pick a non-negotiable something that removes your will from the decision to start running again.
Walking for 15-30" at the aid stations then becomes:
- A tool for slowing you down early on the run. Stand a half to a mile out from T2. From the looks of it, about half the field thinks they can run a sub 3:15 marathon, has hundreds drill it at sub 7:30 pace...until they end up walking 10 miles at 17' pace. Walking the aid stations slows you down, separates you from these people who are running too fast, and focuses you on your race, a 140 mile TT, not a race to the fastest mile 8 of the run split.
- A reward for continuing to run between the aid stations. As the run develops:
- At first you won't need to walk the aid stations, at all. You don't think about it until you're in the aid station.
- After about mile 8 or 10, you'll start looking for the next aid station (ie permission to walk and take a short break) about 7-8' after you've left your last aid station.
- Then you start looking for it at 6' out
- Then 4' out
- Then 2' out
- Then 30" out :-)
- Giving yourself permission to walk the aid stations, beginning with Mile 1, becomes a reward for continuing to run between the aid stations. The mental conversation becomes "Body, STFU. Keep running, don't slow down, and I will reward you for that effort over the next mile by letting you walk 30" at the next aid station. That's the deal and we only have to play this game for another 6-8 miles. Suck it up."
Walking then becomes a tactic, to keep you running and not slowing down between the aid stations, vs a failure. Next time you go for a long run with friends, do this 1 mile on, 30" off (walking, not standing) thing. See just how little space they actually gain on you, how quickly you can get back up to pace, and long you can maintain this total pace vs them slowing down. That slowing effect is much greater and much more likely on the IM marathon.
I have a Garmin 310 and I walk 30" every mile on nearly all of my training runs. I have one display screen that gives me current pace, cummulative distance, time, blah, blah and another that gives me current pace, lap distance and average pace of the lap. I hit the lap button at the end of the mile and see myself walking for 30" at about 17-18' pace. When I start running, my avg pace for the lap is...17'. But it quickly spools down until by about .6-7 miles into the interval I'm back at the average pace I would be at anyway, had I not taken a 30" break. Each time I do and see this I gain confidence in what the numbers tell me. I'm able to reset my focus on form and pace cues that I hold for 1 mile and then reset at the start of the next interval.
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Comments
Thanks!
Bev: see how I set up my Garmin above. The keys are:
So basically, when you start running at the end of the aid station (I hit lap as soon as I start walking) you'll see that your average pace for the lap is ~18'. Next to this is your current pace, the pace you're running at, 9' miles. As you rack up more time/distance in that individual lap at your 9' pace, that 18' current lap avg pace will very quickly drop down to very near or at 9' pace....just in time to hit the next aid station and start walking again, repeating this exercise.
Note that you're walking, not stopping, so you're NOT going from 9:30 pace to 10:00 pace. It's more like 9:30 to 9:40 pace, in my experience. More importantly:
Yes, the first 2-3 miles are downhill, then flat to rolling along the river. Bottomline is you have to think and not rely on the Garmin so much. "Mission: JOG down this hill, crazy easy!" You're all smart enough to know what "jog" is, feels like, regardless of what the Garmin says, on a 2-3 mile downhill. When in doubt...slow down! If it were me, I'd want to make the turn on the other side of the bridge, onto River Road, feeling like I didn't do a damn thing all the way down the hill. I've basically coasted...then I would take that same RPE onto River Road and up/down the rollers until mile 6.
By now you should all know what "jog" is and shouldn't need a Garmin to tell you what is, maybe just to confirm if you are....not jogging!
. No IM run course, except Florida, is totally flat so we all need to have our thinking caps on out there.
I did this plan at IMCDA and it worked great. I was able to "run" the whole marathon, by strategically walking the end of the aid stations. As the day wore on I would start just a little sooner but the "walk" never extended longer than 45 seconds. It really becomes a reward that your mind plays with your body. But it does work.
I'd highly recommend Rich's strategy. I used it for IMWI09 and was able to negative split and felt much better at mile 18 than previous IMs.
I used the strategy for 4 half-marathons and 1 full marathon last year and it worked like a charm every time. My half marathon times dropped 10 minutes from Jan to September. You get funny looks at first but if you're respectful of the other runners' space (like Rich said- walk at the end of the station) you'll be passing them sooner every mile until they're all history!
DrD
A friend of mine at work is a joyful 50+ woman who is a 5 hour + marathoner. For years I had been getting her to try walking 20-30 sec each mile in her races, but she insisted her goal was to "run every step" - even at her speed it was a pride thing for her. She kept returning frsustrated that she couldn't accomplish that goal - she kept walking parts of the end of each race. Her last marathon, she came back beaming, admitting to a PR AND to walking every aid station (about 2 miles apart), and admitting I (or at least Jeff Galloway, whose work I had referred her to) had been right all along.
I think you would want to hit the lap button when you stop running/start walking. That may or may not be at a mile marker or at an aid station. If you forget to press a button...then you have average pace for a 2 mile interval
. If you press the wrong button...ask a specatator what time it is or look at your watch to get your race time...assuming you can do _that_ math 
I can still do the 30 steps of walking at anypoint during the mile interval and everything works out just fine. If the aid station happens to be at the beginning of the mile, my average pace drops significantly, but I know I have .75 or more of a mile to slowly get it back. If the aid station happens to be at the end of a mile, I may go into it with an average pace that is just a few (i.e. 2-3) seconds fast, but after the 30 steps it ends up being about right.
One small pointer... if you are going on a traditional "wide path" race course, you may want to set your Garmin to autolap every 1.01 miles, rather than 1.00 miles because you won't run the shortest path and it can get annoying to have your "mile marker" different than the official race course one. However, on a narrow path course, there is no reason to do this.
@William, I actually make it a game and see if I can take the shorts (legal ofcourse) path possible from mile marker to mile marker.
I notice this especially on the bike, people taking the lines/curves of the road and not cutting the apex of the corner. I learned how to do it in my car (at high speed), then on the motorcycle (at even higher speeds), and that translated quite nicely to the bike. And it's FUN!!!