The Walking Part Is the Point

Hey {{first name | reader}},

It's Tuesday, which means your weekly fitness check-in. Welcome to Week #38.

Last week I was visiting my sister and her family when I announced that I was heading out for a run-walk. This inspired a round of jokes from my brother-in-law.¹

Fair enough. Twenty-five-year-old me would have mocked me too.

I've always loved running, and after taking a couple of years off, I've missed it. Spinning is excellent cardio, but it doesn't scratch the same itch. The elliptical has never convinced me of its purpose. So I've been easing myself back into running using Jeff Galloway's Run-Walk-Run method.

The running part was easy to accept.

It was the walking that took some work.

Jeff Galloway was a 1972 U.S. Olympian who died in February at 80. He developed Run-Walk-Run in 1974 while teaching a class for beginning runners. Instead of asking people to run continuously until they were exhausted, he deliberately inserted walking breaks.

The idea eventually spread well beyond beginners: the walking is part of the workout, not evidence that the workout has failed.

This was not a concept younger me would have embraced.

When I was running marathons, I wouldn't even stop at water stations. I'd grab a cup without breaking stride, throw approximately a third of it toward my mouth and wear the rest. Stopping felt like cheating.

Two Achilles ruptures, a hip injury, a knee injury and a miserable bout of plantar fasciitis have changed my standards.

I've spent years trying to find another cardio activity I like as much as running. Nothing has quite managed it. When people used to ask why I ran marathons, I told them I ran because someday I wouldn't be able to — and I wanted to have run as much as I could before that happened.

Apparently I am not yet ready to declare that day here.

Before I started running again, I rebuilt the leg strength that supports it, with a particular focus on my calves after the Achilles injuries. I waited until I could move without pain. And I'm still doing very small doses: a few short sprints² and run-walk sessions that are roughly half running and half walking.

The goal is not another marathon. It's a pain-free 5K.

And if the Achilles starts complaining, I back off.

That may be the biggest difference between the runner I was and the runner I'm trying to become. Younger me thought progress meant doing more. Current me is starting to appreciate that sometimes progress means doing just enough that you can come back and do it again.

The walking part is what makes that possible.

Question: How long do I need to take off after an injury?

Answer: Probably less total rest than we used to think — but the injury gets a vote.

For many sprains, strains and other soft-tissue injuries, the trend in sports medicine has moved away from weeks of complete rest. After an initial period of protecting the injury, appropriately loading the tissue and gradually restoring movement is often part of recovery.

That does not mean "ignore pain and carry on." A rupture, fracture or significant joint injury is obviously a different animal from a mildly irritated tendon.

My old instinct was binary: either I could do the workout or I was injured and should do nothing. Rehab taught me there is an enormous middle ground between those two things.

How quickly you move through it depends on the injury, your symptoms and what your doctor or PT tells you. But "don't move again until everything feels completely normal" is not a universal recovery plan.

Myth: Running wrecks your knees.

Reality: Knees aren't tires. They don't come with a fixed number of miles.

Research generally finds that recreational runners don't have more knee osteoarthritis than non-runners, and some studies find less knee pain among runners.

That doesn't mean everyone should lace up and start pounding out ten miles tomorrow. Previous joint injuries matter. So do training volume, strength, recovery and how quickly you increase your workload. Competitive runners logging very high mileage are also a different population from someone jogging a few times a week.

Even having osteoarthritis doesn't automatically put running on the forbidden list. Exercise is a standard part of arthritis treatment; the question is what type and dose your particular joint tolerates.

So no, running isn't inherently bad for your knees.

Doing too much, too soon, with a body that isn't ready for it? That's a different newsletter.

Sweet potatoes can be baked, mashed, fried, stuffed and turned into pie.

I mostly want mine salty and crispy.

Preheat the oven to 450°F.

Toss the sweet potato cubes with olive oil and seasoned salt. Spread them in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet — give them some room or they'll steam instead of crisp.

Roast for about 25 minutes, turning once if you're feeling industrious, until browned outside and soft inside.

Carbs. Salt. Crunch. No further sales pitch required.³

If you need another reason to consider running, a 2023 study of more than 4,400 U.S. adults found that people who reported at least 75 minutes a week of jogging or running had longer leukocyte telomeres than people who didn't run.

Telomeres are associated with cellular aging, which makes that finding intriguing.

Important Radish fine print: this was an observational snapshot, not an experiment. It can tell us that running and longer telomeres were associated; it cannot tell us that running caused the difference.

So I'm not promising that 75 minutes of running will make you biologically twelve years younger.

Unfortunately.

Try five minutes of run-walk.

Seriously. Five.

You can make the running interval absurdly short: 5 seconds running, 55 seconds walking. Repeat.

If five seconds of running sounds ridiculous, that's sort of the point. The goal isn't to prove how much running you can tolerate today.

It's to make sure you can do it again.

Stay strong,
{{first name | reader}}

P.S. Walking mid-run used to feel like quitting. Now it's the reason I'm still running at all.