Jeff Galloway recently came into the Maine Running Company for the evening to share his knowledge with the local community. He was at the store (or out for a run with the local training group) between 5:30 and 7:00 for a meet and greet where people were able to ask individual questions, and then gave a presentation to the crowd for about 80 minutes where he covered topics such as building endurance, The Magic Mile, building speed, cross training, the run-walk-run method, and basic nutrition.

Jeff is a former Olympian who has trained over a quarter million runners in the past 30 years and who has collected data on different training metrics from many of them.

His first training group came in 1978 after being invited to take over a running class and he thought that it would be a good opportunity to promote his store. The class was made up of 3 groups. First, there were the people that had never really exercised or been in shape. Second, there were the people that had never run but who had done other sports and were at least a little fit. Third, there were the people in between. There wasn’t a single person in the class that was already a runner.

This first group proved to be the first time that he started using the run-walk-run method, and he managed to get everybody started on the path to being a runner over the next 10 weeks without a single person getting injured.

Since then, he has refined his techniques and found out what works best through multiple surveys of the people that he has coached and who have bought his books. His 80 minute clinic contains a broad overview of many of the topics that he covers in his normal 5 hour course, dealing with what he has learned over the last 3 decades.

Over the course of this week, I will be publishing my notes on the event to the website. You can subscribe to updates through RSS or email, or just check back. The first article on building endurance will be up tomorrow morning.

(Pictured Above: Jeff Galloway with Mizuno Representative Colin Ingram – All Photos)