321 Go! Extra: runDisney Pacing with Chris Twiggs and the Debut of "Run Walk Eat"

An engaging and continued chat all about running, eating, and everything in between with Chris Twiggs. Carissa shares some exciting news about her new book  "Run Walk Eat"!

Carissa's book, co-authored with Jeff Galloway, focuses on the Run Walk Run method and emphasizes the importance of nutrition education. During our chat, she enlightens us on topics such as portion control, the right time to eat, and even how to squeeze in a cheat meal without feeling guilty. Later, Chris rejoins the conversation and shares his experiences of pacing for runDisney events, his strategies to overcome common running hurdles, and his past life as a chess champion. 

As we wrap up, the spotlight remains on Chris as he dives deep into the nuts and bolts of coordinating pace groups for Run Disney events. He discusses the often overlooked physical and mental requirements of being a pacer, and how he handles the stress of the last mile of a marathon. Finally, he gives us a sneak peek into the Wine and Dine expo, and where you can find him, Jeff, and Barb Galloway. So, strap on your running shoes, because this is one episode you won't want to miss.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to 321 Go the Podcast. I'm John Pelkey.

Speaker 2: 0:07

And I'm Karissa Galloway, and we're bringing you stories from start to finish to keep the everyday athlete motivated to keep moving towards the next finish.

Speaker 1: 0:16

Alright, listeners, we have a treat for you today. We've had such a great time with Perfect Disney Marathon or Chris Twigs on the last episode that we just talked frankly for too long, which can be a problem with you and I Sometimes we lose ourselves in the exuberance of our own verbosity. We want to bring you all of that interview and a little chat, so here is a shorter, sweeter version of 321 Go 3, 2, 1, go. Alright, folks, it is a very, very exciting day for one of the podcast's hosts, and it's not me. Karissa, do you have some special news or anything special about the day that you would like to share?

Speaker 2: 1:05

Yes, and I was thinking of something sarcastic to say to kick that off. But I don't have it. But what I do have is that today is the day you can officially get your hands on my very first book. It's so exciting what You've written a book You've written a book You've registered to I-T-T-I-T-I-N. In real life.

Speaker 1: 1:22

John, did you know that? I've been told that People email me that information from time to time. They do that. Well, I have to ask you, as a college English major who thought he had a great novel in him and really needs to hurry that up if it's going to happen, how does it feel to be a published author? Because, all kidding aside, if I ever saw a published book with my name as the author, I would probably break down and weep for the better part of a decade.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Yeah, I think it's pretty surreal. So I had always, as you said I think all of us would love to be a published author. That's something that we want to do and, as a dietician, I had that on my radar. So I was fully in the goal box of I'm just going to self publish a book. Well, I had the opportunity, through Meyer and Meyer, which is a great sports specific publishing company, to write a book with Jeff Galloway.

Speaker 2: 2:11

What we brainstormed and came up with was a little riff on his Run Walk Run method called Run Walk Eat. Now that I have the actual book in my hand and it's John, it's a real book. It's not like the one you made in school where we put that little spiral thing behind it. I mean, it's got to see it for real is crazy, because we finished it about a year ago, last October, and then we they wanted to hold it to release it at the end of the year, going into that new year, new year trend, so to actually see it. And Weston was slipping through it. He's like you wrote most of this. What did my dad do? I was like no, jeff, there's a good nugget from Jeff in there, but it's really cool.

Speaker 1: 2:51

All right. Again it's called Run Walk Eat, a little play on the Run Walk Run. Can you give everybody sort of the elevator pitch overview of what it really is about outside of Run Walking and Eating?

Speaker 2: 3:02

Yeah. So when you get it, you're going to be front and center with how I coach people with nutrition and that's education, because I don't believe that anybody can make those sustainable, long-term, better nutrition choices that really are, like I said, sustainable, that will work for you without a nutrition education If you don't know what a fat is, what the carbohydrate is, what a protein is, what fiber is and why you need it. So if you listen to the podcast, you're a little bit ahead of the curve, because that's what I try to do here, but it's education-based and I think about it this way.

Speaker 2: 3:32

When I first started running, thought about doing a marathon, it was like we'll run 26.2 miles. You and I were up there on the stage. I was like, well, that seems like that's super far. No, you know hard to pass. But then I met Jeff Galloway and it was like you get to take a walk break. Okay, I can run for two and a half minutes, I can do that. So originally, when I was brainstorming books, that came the idea of eat cheat repeat with the concept of that. Yeah, what do you think about that? You like that?

Speaker 1: 4:00

Mine would be eat cheat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat the cheat part. But sure I love it actually.

Speaker 2: 4:05

But the concept was that you don't have to have a perfect diet and when you have that cheat meal you don't have to give up and say that you failed and have those negative emotions that come with food. If you have the nutrition education, you can be empowered to be like hey, do you want pizza today? I do want pizza today. And then you wake up the next morning and you had the pizza, you enjoyed the pizza. You go back to that nice Greek yogurt with chia seeds and berries. Does that make sense to you?

Speaker 1: 4:29

It does make sense to me and really it led to some questions that I have. So, if you don't mind, I'm gonna Mike Wallace you a little bit. There's a reference that I probably should have made.

Speaker 2: 4:37

I didn't know, I didn't know it was coming.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Yeah, I just know about people and and eating habits because there's so many speed bumps you can run into, even when you're trying to eat healthily Processed foods. Obviously we've talked about that on episodes before that processed foods are a problem Portion control for Americans. I've, as I've mentioned before, we have very, very close friends in England who live in London and they're amazed when they come here at just the size of a portion Eating at the wrong time of day, how you space out your meals. Again, I'm gonna put you on the spot with this what do you believe in? What order do you see people most running into those problems? I mean, my guess would be portion control and then, of course, again, processed foods shop on the outside aisles folks, not the inside aisles in a grocery store. But what do you see as the thing that people run into the most?

Speaker 2: 5:31

I definitely think it is a lot of portion control because you know, it's not necessarily. You know my daughter, last night she actually said this what we were eating, bread. And she said bread makes you fat. And so we, of course, at that day we had a whole discussion about, well, no, mommy's had, you know, an English muffin, and then she had a sandwich for lunch. Bread doesn't make you fat. Too much bread makes you fat. Too many apples make you fat, you know, and I don't shouldn't use the word fat, but like they can cause weight gain over consumption. So if we kept our foods the same a side of health benefits and eight less left three bites on our plate, didn't go back for more, halved our takeout, we're most likely going to lose weight if that was our only goal. So I think portion control and the portions we serve ourselves and the portions we're given are just entirely too much. So if we're not conscious about what we're doing and how much we're eating and how often that happens, I think that is one area that contributes to whether it's it's weight gain or whether it's just not being at an overall healthy diet.

Speaker 2: 6:30

The other thing I'll say is we don't think about what we're going to eat and what we're going to do. And I always make this analogy If you're going to run a half marathon or, for you, a 10k, you have a training plan, you've set this up, you've looked ahead. Most mornings we wake up, we don't think about what we're going to eat in the day, or we didn't think about the week before. How do I set myself up for success? And maybe, as busy professionals, busy parents, we get in a day where I've gone and I've done all this and I've barely been home and I get home I don't have anything to eat. So I'm just reaching and grabbing for something and in that moment we make a choice that's not as healthy because we're hangry or we've rationalized I've had such a long, busy day that I can eat whatever I want.

Speaker 2: 7:05

So I think that the planning and the prep, even if we just think through dinners, maybe you can circumvent some of those problems. So at that point they don't have to be a will power control like oh, my kids eat McDonald's and I've got to not have any. Not have any, not have any, where it can be a conscious choice or it could be a oh well, they're going to go to McDonald's, but I know that I've already prepped ahead some meatballs and some broccoli at home, where I had that before. So those would be the two areas I think that we can be more conscious of, and an awareness can lead to better choices, without putting the negativity on ourselves Like I've made bad choices, I eat bad, I can't lose weight. I'm this and I'm that. I don't want people to have negative emotions associated with food.

Speaker 1: 7:45

And weight shouldn't be the font. Health is. The is really because weight change and we've you know the simple thing about muscle awareness weighs more than fat, so you, you know, target weight may not be there. If you're doing all this, have you working out? I do want to mention this, too, as somebody who struggles with. My greatest failing is my I don't exercise enough and I'm trying to up that game and that's why I'm going to be running a 10K and all those sort of things.

Speaker 1: 8:07

But a couple of things that my wife and I have done smaller plates, don't use a big plate when you're we're putting a plate together when you're eating it. It will help your portion control and maybe eat a little more slowly. I know that the trend in schools were and I know this is where I started eating really fast, as classes were 55 to 60 minutes long and lunch with 35 minutes long and just rushing through it. But also something to keep in mind, and we found this because we do plan our meals out through the week, as I've talked about before the. We do a couple of vegetarian meals a week, some meatless meals, but it also helps the wallet if you plan it out as opposed to just going to the store and saying, oh, I'm going to buy some stuff, Well, we have to go, I'll grab some of this, that and the other thing.

Speaker 1: 8:52

If you've planned your meals out, you will spend less over a period of time because you're just not impulse buying. And then, of course, the old adage of never shop hungry. It's like a really, really big one, but there, yeah, those things that you can do. I couldn't agree more that that you will help yourself, at least incrementally, get a good start on your, on your diet. Now, how about purchasing the book? How would one go about this? Do they have to show up at the Galloway household and will you sign it and hand it to them, or I assume there are other places that it can be purchased?

Speaker 2: 9:32

Yeah, it's been available for preorder, but now you can actually you know buy it. It'll get shipped to you. So it's online at all the major book sale, book retailers and things like that. If you use Rakuten, I think, thrift books maybe you're going to get an extra 2% back. It is on Amazon. However. Publishers have let us know that Amazon doesn't track sales the same way that booksellers do. So if you could take the extra time and you want to buy it, do it from a traditional bookseller online and that's going to help support the book getting in more hands. It's also on shopJeffGallowaycom and you will be putting the book notes, the show notes, how to do that, and then, if you purchase it on there and you put a little note, I can actually sign it for you, send a message to you, ship it out and then we're working through the details.

Speaker 2: 10:16

But Jeff and Barb and all of them have a booth at the Wine and Dine Expo, so we're going to find a time. I can't send it yet because Claire has a gymnastics meet that weekend. That I am just crossing every finger and toe is not. It's not start at 8am, but so once we know when her gymnastics meet is, then I'll plan a time, maybe probably Thursday or Friday, where I will be there selling the books and autographing them. But thank you for the support. It's really surreal. On one hand, I want to be like I don't even care who buys it. I wrote it. I'm an author, I know. But, john, I'll.

Speaker 1: 10:47

I'm a little offended just on this. This level right here is that a, as people know, my bio is still not on the website and I've promised that I would write one of those for everybody. I absolutely hate that. But yours is now a registered dietitian and published author and mine is Pudgy Showhost, so I don't think that that necessary. I'm going to have to up my game and do something. I don't know that a book is in my future, but good if I could get a short story published or something. Perhaps I'll.

Speaker 2: 11:13

Perhaps I'll shoot for that and Riley can do the illustrations. That's true, she's a wonderful artist Run.

Speaker 1: 11:19

Disney race host, riley Claremont, who will join us on this podcast as we get closer to Wine and Dine, has taken up painting as the his new job as house husband, which I'm sure he'll talk about, and yeah, that's right he could do. I'm going to do a short story and Riley will do the illustrations. I'll probably have to self publish stuff. I will say that probably more than likely.

Speaker 2: 11:43

I can't help you on that. It's not a sport book, I'm, you know, but thank you to my reminder, thank you to Jeff Goway for making this happen and thank you I to all of you for the support of run, walk, eat, available now, and, john, I have a copy for you. I just need you to tell me how you'd like me to Inscribe it.

Speaker 1: 11:59

I would like to inscribe to the announcer three person who's most inspired me in my lifetime.

Speaker 2: 12:04

To eat better, because I don't want to grow up. Oh.

Speaker 1: 12:11

Man, first, have you ever run far enough to need nutrition? And now it's like the man who inspired me to not be like him.

Speaker 2: 12:19

Well, I've always said it.

Speaker 1: 12:20

I and I'll say it again that I am the before picture in a gym ad. I'm there for run Disney weekends. For those of you who are like I don't know if I can, if I'm in good enough shape, well, look at, this guy finished a 5k, committed to a 10k. So who knows, by the time I'm uh, I'm a I'll be 60 next year. By the time I'm 70, I might be in moderately decent shape.

Speaker 2: 12:43

Here's to hoping.

Speaker 1: 12:44

Yeah, well, your wife to. She's hoping. I'm just kidding.

Speaker 2: 12:47

Yeah, get us that bio, John. By the way, people, everybody's been asking every I'm just kidding. I think western did make one up. It's somewhere You'll have to find it for you. Yeah, he made if you make one up.

Speaker 1: 12:56

Could you have me as the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Dr Javago, because I'd really dead dig that just one in there. Yeah, throw one in there. That's not true. Three people actually.

Speaker 2: 13:06

Yes yes in the bio. Well, thank you. Thank you, john, for letting me share this special moment. And now let's get back on to the first guess. That was so nice we had to have him on twice. Here's a little bit more about Chris twigs and run Disney pacing.

Speaker 3: 13:23

Okay, it's time for the goods. Let's get on to the interview.

Speaker 1: 13:27

As Chris had mentioned, you wear a lot of hats. Chris, you're a Renaissance man, former chess champion. I'm sticking with that story now that you've told me you're Good up there in Duval County in the chess competitions. But let's talk about your role with the pace groups now. What is it? What it is you actually do.

Speaker 3: 13:45

Yeah, so I have the good fortune of being able to coordinate the Pacers For the run Disney events, which is just it's. It's fantastic to get to do that Because Jeff Galloway is the official training consultant for run Disney. They decided years ago that it would make a good idea that for the Pacers to be using his run walk run method, if it's good enough for us to tell people on the website that here's how to train and this is the best way to run it, then let's make sure that they can practice that out there on the course. So I Line up who the Pacers are gonna be, what corrals they're gonna be in, leading what paces, and tell them what run walk ratios to use. It's a lot of fun. I kind of we get to treat.

Speaker 3: 14:28

We do this for a few other races. Galloway has a few other races that we coordinate Pacers for, including Jeff's own half marathon up in Atlanta and March, and we kind of see marathon weekend in January is like our Super Bowl. This is where we bring the best Pacers that we can possibly get, the most reliable, the most popular and and sometimes we bring in people. We've had the pacing coordinator for the London marathon, for example, ran as one of our Pacers back in January and and so we have the opportunity to kind of showcase what we do and, and sometimes with people that are helping out in other big races, they kind of get to see how run walk works and how well it helps people get to the finish line.

Speaker 2: 15:17

I will say it's so helpful to have run a race, being a Galloway runner that has run walk Pacers, because not every race in the World has them. So the first marathon I ever did was Donna in Jacksonville. They had them. And then when I come to run Jeff's race, like it just Changes it because you don't have to think, and a lot of times that question is how fast do I need to run? When I'm running to hit my Pace, and if you have the pacer there, you just know that. But for someone who's listening to this, chris, and is totally new to Run Disney, they're coming to their first race. How and why should you run with a pace group?

Speaker 3: 15:48

well how you should run with a pace group is you find them in the starting corral, you'll walk over close to them and you run when they run, you walk when you walk when they walk and you finish when they finish. It's really simple. Basically, you get to turn your brain off and just follow, which is fun, especially if you're choosing a pace that's challenging for you it's hard to run a pace that's challenging for you and also Be in charge of how fast you're supposed to be going right now and how long you're supposed to be walking right now, and all of those things. So when you're running with a pace group, you get to turn that part of your brain off and just follow and have fun and listen.

Speaker 3: 16:30

And some of the pace groups, some of the Pacers, have games that they play with the With the pace groups, and trivia questions that they throw out and lots of things that they do to kind of distract people from the fact that they're working hard. So that's, that's the how and and the why is. I think there are two or three good reasons. One, as you said, if you're using RunWalk in a race that doesn't have RunWalk Pacers, you can feel a little bit singled out, you can feel a little bit awkward and sometimes you can get trampled when you're taking those walk breaks and things like that, and you have that weird leapfrog thing that happens to you where, like midway through, somebody goes I'm going to try this next time because you'll walk back and then you'll pass them, and then you'll walk back and then you pass them, which I just said could be entertaining.

Speaker 2: 17:16

but it also is challenging because you're trying to, you know, have that course etiquette along the way.

Speaker 3: 17:21

Oh yeah, oh, you get that all the time right and Defa, like you said, by two-thirds of the way through the race. They're asking you okay, what exactly are you doing, and can I join Because?

Speaker 2: 17:31

you're walking and they're not, and they were like wait, I want to take that walk break and you can, exactly, yeah.

Speaker 3: 17:36

So that's fantastic. So when you're with the pace group, you don't have as much of that because you're part of that wave that's going through. And then there's a real serious energy in that pace group that can carry you to a finish that you might not be able to push yourself to get. The first time I qualified for Boston was at the Disney Marathon using a pace group. Now, this was prior to Galloway, providing the Pacers, and so the Pacers there were not using Run Walk, and so what I opted to do? I caught up with the pace group at 15 or 16 miles into the race and I cut out the walk breaks once I caught the pace group, because I was so anxious about losing contact with that pace group that I just held on to them and got my time to qualify.

Speaker 3: 18:28

And so there's that power, that energy of knowing, when you're with these Pacers, they're going to finish on time. This is not a challenging, even if you are going so much faster than you've ever run for that distance. The Pacers it's not faster than it. Most of those Pacers, in fact all the Pacers, can go at least half an hour faster in the marathon, probably an hour faster in the marathon than what they're pacing, and in the half marathon it's 20 to 30 minutes that they're slowing down by, so it's not a challenging pace for them. The only reason they're there as Pacers is to help you get the time, and so it's nice, it's comforting to know these people know what they're doing. I just stick with them and I'm going to get this finished time, so it's great. So there's power in the group, there's energy in the group and then there's safety in the group in terms of when you take those walk breaks.

Speaker 1: 19:21

Well, what, if any, is the most common misconception? Maybe you hear from people who haven't chosen to run with a pace group, or just curious about it.

Speaker 3: 20:48

I think one of the misconceptions is that well, some people I've heard this from some run Disney announcers even. There's this idea that the Pacers just run as fast as they want until they get close to the finish and then they slow down and they walk toward the finish line so that they finish on time. And so we get a lot of questions about are you negative splitting? Are you running faster at the beginning? Are you going slower at the beginning and then picking up? What's the plan? What we do as Galloway Pacers is we run, even splits, as much as we can, so, as much as we can, we try to make every mile the same pace.

Speaker 3: 21:29

Now, disney races have a challenge because we're running through the Disney parks and there are bottlenecks that happen, sometimes through the Disney parks, or even sometimes there's that bottleneck that happens as you leave Magic Kingdom heading back toward Animal Kingdom. There's that bottleneck as you go past the Grand Floridian and the Polynesian because you're down to one lane. And so our Pacers, especially Marathon Weekender people that have run those courses before they know where those bottlenecks happen, so they will adjust pace, maybe to get a little bit in the bank before they get to those bottlenecks, knowing that they're going to lose some time and then hopefully not losing so much time that they have to really push later on. So there's a lot of art that goes into where to run, how to run as pace groups.

Speaker 2: 22:20

I'm holding a stick. It's very. I wouldn't want to run with a stick or a lightsaber or an umbrella. I just can't even hold my phone. So the stick holding I find very, very daunting.

Speaker 3: 22:31

Well, you know, I've run as a Pacer the last couple of years. I've run as a Pacer at the London Marathon and they give us backpacks with flags attached to the backpack and that seems like a great idea because your hands are free. It seems great until you have to go into the Port-a-Potty. Ooh, you have to go into Port-a-Potty. It's complicated when you're wearing that backpack with the flag on it. So at least if I'm carrying the flag, I've got my pace partner there, I can hand the flag to my partner. They keep the group going. I duck into the Port-a-Potty, I come back out, I catch up. It's a lot easier. That's the other question we get is what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? What's a pace group do if we have to stop and go to the bathroom? Well, the group's not going to wait for you. You've got to anticipate where those Port-a-Potty's are going to be, which sometimes is harder. Those Port-a-Potty's are not always in the same spot.

Speaker 2: 23:26

Every race Right and sometimes there's a line and then like, oh, I got to go, but I'm not going to wait in that line, I'm going to wait for the next one and the next one, exactly.

Speaker 3: 23:34

So if you see that big bank of Port-a-Potty's coming up, the best thing to do is to move ahead, run ahead of the pace group a little bit so that you've got a little bit of an advantage by the time they get there.

Speaker 3: 23:46

Hopefully you get in, you do your stuff, you come out and then take your time catching up to that group. Don't sprint to catch that group right away, but give yourself a mile or so, because on the big stretches, especially when you're out on the road, you can see that pace group half a mile away. So let yourself gradually catch up with that pace group. A good way to do that is just to cut your walk break short by like five seconds, and you can do that if you're using the Galloway Timer that beeps. If you wait until the beeping is done before you start your walk, but then you start your run immediately at the beginning of the next set of beeps, you're gaining about five seconds each one of those walk breaks. And so use that technique so that you gradually catch yourself up to that pace group and then, once you're back in the fold of that pace group, you've got that energy that keeps you together again.

Speaker 1: 24:37

I'm just picturing the groups running and somebody going. Can I stop for the bathroom here? And the pace are yelling. You should have gone before we left. It's like the family vacation. Why didn't you go before we left? Like just. I don't even know if this is an easy question to answer, but it is. Is being a pacer difficult.

Speaker 2: 24:55

Is it a?

Speaker 1: 24:55

difficult thing to do, and do you have to be kind of built to do it?

Speaker 3: 25:00

Yes, you do. You have to be built to do it. For one thing, we've all got friends that will say when you talk about what pace you run, whatever it is, even fast, people have friends that do this. You talk about what pace you're running for a particular run and it's oh, it hurts me to run that slow, I can't run that slow. First of all, those people are jerks when they say that.

Speaker 3: 25:22

But there are some runners that really either it's a personality thing or physiologically it really is hard for them to run a slower pace. They've kind of just got one pace that they run, and so asking people to slow down by a lot, by half an hour to an hour to slow down, that's tough for some folks and some folks do not have that talent, so that makes it hard to be a pacer.

Speaker 3: 25:54

Also, all that stuff that I was saying about how when you're running in a pace group and you can turn off your brain and you don't have to worry about how fast you're running, you don't worry about when to run or when to walk or any of those things. Guess who is worrying about all that stuff? The pacer is worrying about all that stuff. And when I'm pacing I've got two watches, I've got a Galloway timer tucked into one of my watches, I've got the flag that has the paces and has the splits on it and I'm checking all of those things all the time. So it is stressful.

Speaker 3: 26:30

It is really stressful to be a pacer, especially for a marathon, because you get tired. Even if you're going slower than you could. You can get tired toward the end of a marathon and the most stressful mile of any marathon as a pacer is that last mile, because if I'm 10 seconds too fast at mile 12, I've got 14 miles to slow myself down to the right pace. Or if I'm three seconds too slow at mile 20, I've got six miles to make up those three seconds. But if I hit mile 25 or 26, or 13 and a half marathon. If I hit that last mile 12, going to the last mile and I'm off by a little bit, I've got no other opportunities.

Speaker 3: 27:16

I've got to fix this problem in this last mile because we really try to nail it, we really do and, as you guys have seen, I tend to lead the first group, especially on half marathon weekends, and we try very hard. If we're leading that 145 group, we want to cross under the clock at 14500. We want it to be perfect. Now, all the other groups that are behind us, they're running based on chip time, which means they're going based on what's on their watch, not based on what's on the finish line clock.

Speaker 2: 27:45

And we do say that for people. So the spectators were like, hey, they're right, that clock's not their clock, they're half an hour behind that first group, which is what the clock is.

Speaker 3: 27:55

Yeah, because it took them that long to get to the start exactly. But we realized running from Corral A we've maybe got. I think the most we've ever had is about 10 seconds difference between the clock and the chip and so when we're that close we might as well try to nail that. We tell the people we're running with like we're going to try to finish. So we've got a 10 second stagger. So if you finish within 10 seconds behind me, you still got that time. But we really want that finish line photo of us under the clock at 00. That's what we're looking for and that's stressful. It's a fun kind of stress, but it's stressful.

Speaker 2: 28:29

Yeah, and you guys do an awesome job.

Speaker 3: 28:31

It's incredible.

Speaker 2: 28:32

I know there are some familiar faces that we see pacing. I know you and Mark up front, and we know CeCe and we know some of the other ones. But I have been at the Galloway booth on a race weekend for very limited amounts of time. But I in that time have heard well, I want to be a pacer, or how do I get to be a pacer? So I'm just going to ask you that question so you can give us your answer, because it's not an easy thing. You have a great field of paces that we work with a lot because they're great at what they do.

Speaker 3: 29:00

Yeah, and we do. We do get people all the time that come up and sometimes that results in people being good paces when I can. If you come up and you say hey, I've got a 230 marathon PR and I use RunWalk and I love Disney and I'm here every race weekend anyway, then yeah, those are very good chance I'm going to use.

Speaker 2: 29:26

I mean, that's amazing time, by the way. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 29:31

But if you come up and you say I'm a five hour marathoner and I don't use RunWalk but I'm willing to learn, and if I get the sense that what you're looking for is a free entry into a Disney race, that's not the person that I'm looking for as a pacer. We want somebody who is hopefully my preference is somebody who's already using RunWalk and so I don't have to sell them on the method and they are willing to slow down. They're just there because they want to help people. Those are the people that we're really looking for. Occasionally, we do get folks that are fast and they fit a spot that we could really use, and what I tell them to do is well, if you're not already using RunWalk, I need you to get out there, I need you to try it and I need you to prove to yourself that it works. So I ask them to run a magic mile, see what that magic mile predicts for a half marathon and then go race a half marathon using the RunWalk method the RunWalk ratio that's on our chart and see if you can hit your goal time using that RunWalk and then get back with me and tell me what you think. And a couple of times we've had people do that and they get back and like, oh my gosh, I had no idea this worked. I had no idea that I would feel this good. And the thing is, when people have had success running without walk breaks, why would you mess with success? If you've hit the times you want to hit, why would you mess with that? So it's hard to convince runners who are happy with their times to change to something else.

Speaker 3: 31:09

It's easy to convince somebody my son, who is a fast runner. Well, both my boys are fast runners, but my oldest is a marathoner and ran just under three hours at Disney last year and his first time he went under three. He had tried without walk breaks because he came up running cross country in high school and that sort of thing didn't think he needed walk breaks and he couldn't break through that barrier. And, frankly, what really convinced him was when Weston Galloway went under three hours and using run walk and I finally was able to turn to my son and I'm like, look, you've tried. You tried a couple of times, you couldn't get there. So what do you have to lose? Try this method. And he did it. He succeeded, and so I think that's when people are looking to be Pacers if they haven't already tried run walk, we've got to get them to try it.

Speaker 3: 32:05

We've got to get them to believe in it and I want them to have a personal story that they can tell the runners in their group about how run walk has helped them in their running. And maybe it's getting a PR, maybe it's qualifying for Boston, or maybe it's just I could recover. I could play with my kids the next day after that race and I'd never been able to do that before. So I still want people to come up if they really think they'd be good Pacers. I still want them to come up and talk to me. We all the time we're looking for more Galloway Pacers. There's a very good chance that the first time they run as a Galloway Pacer, it's not going to be at a Disney race. There's a very good chance that it's going to be at another smaller marathon or half marathon that we're supporting, just so that they can get the opportunity to do it with another Galloway, an experienced Galloway Pacer.

Speaker 3: 32:54

Try it out, basically prove that it's right fit for them and then, if it is and I get good reviews about that Pacer, then yeah, there's a good chance that we'll make them part of our team at Disney.

Speaker 1: 33:07

Yeah, gotta start AAA before you go to the major leagues, that's kind AAA is kind yeah. Okay, single A gotta start. Single A club ball, aau, whatever it is, gotta start on the lower level.

Speaker 3: 33:17

And I understand, you know I he started kickball.

Speaker 1: 33:19

Yes, exactly, and I understand competitive runners high school and college. Look at Run Rock Run and it's counterintuitive to think you could actually do better with that. But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. All right, chris, thank you so very much. This has been such a great discussion and I'm sure down the line we're probably gonna talk to you again either pre or post Run Disney Race, but thanks for taking a few minutes with us.

Speaker 3: 33:39

My pleasure. Congratulations on the success of the podcast. You know we all love to hear you folks go on and on at the finish line, sometimes having to tap dance and figure out what to say during those dull moments. It's always fun, and so I've enjoyed hanging out with both of you today.

Speaker 2: 33:55

Thank you, we'll see you soon.

Speaker 1: 33:57

We'll talk to you down the line, chris. Thanks, man. Thanks so much, see you in November. Well, thanks, Chris, so much. We look forward to seeing you at Wine and Dine. And if you wanna chat with Chris or Jeff or even Barb Galloway about Pacers and everything Galloway related, you can find them, as always, at the expo.

Speaker 2: 34:14

Yeah, and we hope you guys enjoyed this little bonus episode. If you have questions, want more bonus episodes or wanna share your story, let us know. Email us at three, two, one go podcast at gmailcom and on Instagram at three, two, one go podcast. Bye-bye, Bye-bye, Bye-bye, Bye-bye. Theme music plays in the background.