Hal Higdon answers your running questions

The Running Dog
Annalisa is an Italian journalist who landed in New York via New Delhi, and Paris before that. She works as a reporter with Quartz (qz.com), and she’s an editor with Global Voices (globalvoices.org). She always thought that she hated running till recently discovered that she may actually really like it. Nalis, as she’s nicknamed, recently interviewed Hal Higdon and wanted to share what she learned. She’s our Whippet of the Week.
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Here’s an excerpt of the interview with Hal Higdon followed by an introduction of her:

How long is the ideal walking break?

That depends. I would say most runners going through an aid station should have time to grab the water, drink it, and maybe even relax a second and let it go through—so anywhere between 30 to 60 seconds. If they need more then so be it, though in today’s marathon events there are almost more aid station that we really need, if you drink at every station you can almost drown.

I always bring up the fact that I ran a 2 hour 29 minute marathon walking through every aid station, and my son Kevin qualified for the Olympic trials with the same strategy, running a 2 hour 18 minute marathon. Even if you walk for a short period of time you don’t really lose that much time.

What is more important: covering longer distances or running faster?

For first timers,… [Read the Rest of the Interview with Hal Higdon Here]

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Now here’s Nalis:
28-r-young-nalisI am a new-ish member: I am pretty regular at the lovely Monday easy runs, and have tried to join the team’s speed workout twice: the first time I was two solid minute per mile slower than the slowest group, and the second time, well, I lost sight of the team while I was sorting out my phone/headphones/running app/everything.

Anyway, everyone in the group is being lovely to me so far, including Jerlyn, who slowed down her ultra marathoner self to ran a whole loop of Central Park with me for the Unity Run post Orlando. Since I am training for my first marathon (NYC), she recommended I check out Hal Higdon novice marathon program. Which I did, and I decided to follow—so far so good (within reason)—though I had many questions about really basic stuff.

I figured I couldn’t be the only newbie who’s confused (and a little overwhelmed), so I decided to make some news I (and others) could use and bombarded Hal Higdon with doubts about things from how to buy shoes to how often to drink to what if you can only run on Sunday instead of Saturday (shocker—it doesn’t matter, so long as you do it).

Here’s what came out of our chat, I hope it’s helpful. And of course, I’d be happy to hear from those of you who are new to the sport and want to share experiences or have basic questions I didn’t answer here: I will try to go seek answers for you, and I am likely to do some more reporting on running as a way to make this marathon business slightly less terrifying. I’m at .
Nalis

More about Dashing Whippets Running Team

The Dashing Whippets Running Team is a New York based running team that is founded on, and driven by, the diversity of our team members. With team members from all over the city, the country and the world, and with greatly different running goals, we find unity in recognizing and appreciating each others differences and our mutual enjoyment of running and participating in the New York running community and beyond.

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