Wednesday, February 3, 2010

To Walk Or Not To Walk

I usually don't do walking breaks while running, only because once I stop to walk, I can never start again. Today I gave it a shot though. I ran 1.25 miles and had quite a stitch in my side, so I stopped and walked for about a minute. I also stretched my calves a bit (or at least I tried to stretch them) and then I started back running. It was really hard the first minute or so-my legs were resisting every step! But I ended up going .8 more, so that was great. My total time was 20:42 with a 10:05 pace (2.05 miles) which I was very pleased with.

Here's a question though-when you stop to walk, do you stop your watch? I did, mostly because I didn't want my overall pace dropping (silly, I know) but I also didn't want the time or distance to count either. I don't start my watch during my workout until my running has started, and I know some people who start their watch right away, and include the warm up walk. I guess it's up the individual.

I forgot to add that I'm still doing the 30 Day Shred! Yesterday was day 5 and it's as hard as ever. I really like it though-it's a hard workout and I can tell it is already starting to change my body.

1 comment:

Patty said...

You can set your Garmin to pause when you stop, mine is. Of course I had to have Marathon Mom set it for me, I still have trouble turning it on. When we were doing the run/walk for our marathon training, it was key to only walk for a minute, otherwise it was too hard to start up again. I think you will find you can go farther and longer with a walk break in there and it won't affect your pace much at all.