Turn Your Walk Into a Run
Posted on Jun 19th 2009 4:00PM by Maggie VinkFiled Under: Fitness
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| Photo: mikebaird/Flickr |
If you walk for exercise, why not try picking up the pace a bit? You don't have to do away with your walking routine altogether, but you can slowly create a running habit as well. After all, variety is the spice of life, and you could also say it's the spice in your workout.
Fitness Magazine has some great tips for turning your walk into a run. To start out, time your walking pace. See if you can walk a 15-minute mile. Yes? Now try for two 15-minute miles. Once you're walking fitness is at that level, you can start adding intervals of running into your two-mile route. Start out with a five-minute walk for a warm up and then:
- Week one. Alternate between running for two or three minutes, then walking for one minute.
- Week two. Extend your running to three to four minutes at a time, with one minute of walking in between.
- Week three. Stretch your running intervals to five or six minutes, with one minute of walking in between.
- Week four. Run one mile, then walk for a minute before starting to run again.
Remember to cool down with a five-minute walk at the end of each workout.
And hey, you never know -- use the Walk-Run method and you just might work your way up to a marathon. Go for it!
