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Having been a runner himself for four decades and introducing thousands to the sport through his beginner-friendly Run-Walk-Run method, Jeff Galloway is, in a way, a real-life Forrest Gump.
He’s seen the sport evolve from its beginnings in the U.S., shared steps with the world’s greats, and helped running grow tenfold by opening one of the first specialty running stores (Phidippides in 1975), and through clinics, retreats, numerous books, and as runDisney’s official training consultant.
Here’s what the legendary runner, past-Olympian, coach, and author has to say about his last 40 years of involvement in the sport.
Runner’s World: How and when did the big running movement happen in your eyes?
Jeff Galloway: It was an evolutionary process. Having run since 1958, I have seen it grow, at first very slowly. The 60s were a time period where you saw the first signs, a few recreational runners who discovered the benefits to mind body and spirit.
In the 70s, there were a number of top athletes, such as my friend Frank Shorter, and predecessor to that would be my roommate from college, Amby Burfoot, who won the Boston Marathon [and who was Runner’s World’s former editor-in-chief]. The demographics of running in the 60s and 70s were mostly 20-something males. There were almost no women at the time. But due to the publicity of Frank’s victory in the Olympics in 72, you started seeing a good push in numbers.
The first running boom was in the late 70s and early 80s. It was still mostly a male, early 20s phenomenon. It was very competitive—a lot of testosterone—but the races grew dramatically in the late 70s and early 80s. I really credit Joanie Benoit. Joanie’s win was just this great impetus for women to try it out. And of course once they tried it, they kept coming, and brought their sisters and their friends and that is what has fueled the growth in running primarily to this day.
What are factors behind the continued growth?
The major factors that are told to me by people who started maybe three to five years ago and just don’t ever want to quit are: the better attitude, the more vitality, and the sense of purpose and personal empowerment that they get. Once you have those types of benefits, you don’t want to go back to your old self. And so that’s the first major thing.
Related: Want to start running? The Big Book of Running for Beginners will take you through everything you need to know to get started, step by step.
The second thing that I’m proud to contribute to is this: It doesn’t have to hurt. The perception that most people have on the front end about distance running is: it’s gotta hurt, and the longer you go, the more it’s gotta hurt. Well, in 1974 I came up with this Run-Walk-Run thing. One person tells another, and they tell their friends and they tell 20 more, and you’re getting this whole new generation of people that really don’t care about competition or times, most of them. It’s improving the quality of these people’s lives. That’s what my mission is.
How did you get started running?
I was a fat kid at age 13 when I started. My dad was in the Navy. I went to 13 schools my first seven years and I never got into sports, never got into exercise. And then he got out of active duty service in 1958 as I entered the eighth grade. The school I went to had a requirement: All boys had to go out for strenuous athletics after school. So reality set in. I had to do something.
I got to know some of the other lazy kids. They told me during that quarter that winter cross-country was the easiest because the cross-country coach was very lenient. They said, “All you have to do is lie to the coach that you’re going to run the trails in the woods. And you just run into the woods 200 yards and hide out.” So I did that the first two days, and an older kid that I like came up to me on the third day and said, “Galloway, you’re running with us today.” He busted me.
Well, I was going to reach the end of the woods and grab my hamstring, but…they were funny. And they were starting to tell gossip about the other kids, and they were welcoming. And every single day I went back to this group and very quickly, they became the best friends I ever had in my life, and they still are just really close friends to this day.
And that was what got you hooked?
Yes. Even on the days when I was physically destroyed, of which there were quite a few those first 10 weeks, I felt better in my spirit and in my head than I had ever felt. And I didn’t want that to go away. So I can relate to the unwashed, and the beginners, and the people who are overweight. It was just a wonderful thing to just discover that you can empower yourself, day after day after day by this running thing.
You ran the 10,000 in the 1972 Olympics, then opened Phidippides. Is that where the Run-Walk-Run method began?
I was so rewarded by the average people who came in to my running store, maybe initially to get a pair of shoes, or a pair of socks. Then I’d start talking to them. “Well, what are you doing? Do you think you’d like to try running?” I started teaching the Run-Walk-Run method in 1974 out of the store.
But, an early customer was the director of a community outreach at a local university and asked me, “Why don’t you teach a course in beginning running?” I said, “Sure. Customers!” Twenty-two people enrolled, and I quizzed each one of them on what their background was. And indeed, none of them had been doing any distance running for at least five years. We pretty quickly divided into three groups based on their conditioning level. I realized that in order to avoid injuries, we were going to have to use walking.
From the outset, I went out with every group, every workout, and made sure that they took their walk breaks from the beginning. At the end of the 10-week class, each one of them finished either a 5K or a 10K. But what really blew me away was that there were no injuries. And I knew, right away, that it was the walk breaks.
What kind of running are you doing now, personally?
Well, I run a marathon a month, and usually my wife, Barb, and I will do a half or maybe two in between. We run them recreationally. We have no time goal, ever. We use very liberal amounts of walking. In the marathon, we do 15 seconds running, and 15 seconds walking. So we keep erasing fatigue and we can run the next day.
For the halves we use 30 seconds run, walk 15; or 22 seconds run, 11 seconds walk. Otherwise, I average six days a week running, just because the brain feels so much better if I run. I don’t always run that much. It averages out to about three to four miles a day on each weekday run, and it’s just a feel-good brain enhancer.
What kind of tips do you have for runners over 45?
The body’s recovery slows down each year past about age 30. And so the Run-Walk-Run becomes crucial and has kept thousands of runners that I have heard from in the game.
Other tips: shortened stride. Biggest form mistake is that people bounce off the ground. Keep your feet low to the ground, have a shortened stride, so the ankle does most of the work. The muscles and the tendons, particularly the joints don’t have to be engaged.
You need to adapt to the right amount of rest that you have. I will say that Run-Walk-Run, when you adjust it well enough, can often mean that you don’t have to take as many days off if you don’t want to. A lot of runners over the age of 40 will go to an every other day program, and they find that they can run the speeds they used to run years ago when they do that. That’s really individual. I personally like to run as many days as I can because of the head benefits.
