Run/walk strategies are so successful on long road races, Caroline Wostmann’s Comrades 2015 won a brilliant case in point. But how can this strategy translate into trail running? On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, we get asked; can you adopt a successful run/walk strategy in trail races?

Welcome back to the next edition of Ask Coach Parry, I’m Brad Brown and Lindsey Parry joins us once again. Lindsey, nice to catch up, are you well today?

Lindsey Parry: Ja, very good man, it’s been a little while, a couple of days since we chatted.

BB: Ja, and I’m in Cape Town, you’re in Jo’burg and I’m absolutely loving running down here, how’s the Jozzi’burg today?

LP: Jozzi’burg the weather is perfect. I’m sure we’re going to have one more cold snap, but quite honestly, it feels like summer has arrived in full force.

BB: You keep telling yourself that, at least there’s one positive about Jozzi’burg. We’ve got the mountain here in CT and that’s all we need. We can have rain, as long as we’ve got the mountain, that’s all that matters. Lindsey, got a great question in today from Heloise Hunter. She’s the Assistant Editor of Trail Magazine.

If you haven’t checked out Trail Magazine, by the way, if you’re into trail running, where have you been? Go check it out or if you’re thinking of getting into trail, it’s definitely a great mag as well. She was saying that they reviewed one of our podcasts in the recent issue of Trail, so go check that out as well.

Using a run/walk strategy in trail races

They also interviewed Caroline Wostmann for a short piece on Comrades competitors giving trail running a go and she’s putting together an article using run/walk strategy in races. She’s got loads of web references and personal experiences but she said it would be good to get your take as Caroline used it successfully in Comrades this year.

In road, the walk appears to be timed after a certain number of minutes of solid running, but for trail, obviously, would the same strategy work? It’s obviously slightly different because it’s terrain when it comes to trail, sometimes you’re forced to walk. Would you employ the same sort of run/walk strategy where you go, you know what, I’m running for eight minutes and then walking for one or would it be more fluid on the trails?

Trail run/walk strategy will depend on the race

LP: Okay, it would be depending on the race that I’m running. So I would certainly have some regimented walking. I’d have an idea of the terrain I was running and there would be sections that I would have planned walk breaks. Just in terms of the general rhythm of walking and those would be on some of the flatter sections. But then in terms of the race itself, particularly on the really long, hard climbs, you can climb at a fairly similar speed if you do kind of route march type of stuff or if you’re running, but the walking does tend to spare your legs a little.

Then quite importantly, and this is a thing that I think a lot of people get wrong when you’re doing trail. It’s often you get to the top of the mountain and then people think you just go clattering down the other side. But that’s when your legs are at their most tired, their most vulnerable, so by just doing a little bit of walking down the steep side until you can feel your legs are feeling a bit better and then get running.

A proper trail run will make you walk

On a proper trail run over mountains, it’s not really possible to run the entire way, there are sections that you are going to have to walk. Then on the long stretches where you can hopefully run, I would still factor in, even if it’s not perhaps as often as in a running race, depending on your ability, you would walk for a minute between every 3-10km, depending on how good a runner you are.

So on the trails you might then say, I’m only going to walk once every 5-13km. So those planned walk breaks, fewer and further between, but certainly a lot more walking on the fly through technical sections, up the very hard and tough climbs. Also at the start of the down, so that you don’t completely trash your legs when they’re at their most vulnerable.

BB: Awesome, Heloise, thank you very much for being in touch, love the mag and we look forward to chatting again soon. If you want to check out Trail Mag, we’ll put the links into the show notes for this episode of Ask Coach Parry as well, so go check it out. From myself, Brad Brown and Lindsey Parry, it’s cheers.