Acceleration gliders and magic miles are two other concepts in the Galloway training program. The idea behind acceleration gliders is that you go through periods where, instead of stopping abruptly, you use your existing momentum to carry you along as a faster pace then just walking, but with little extra effort. One of the supposed benefits of this drill, if I understand it correctly, is to learn how to maximize existing momentum to conserve energy. I think it does this partially by training your body mechanics to step as lightly, and with as little wasted energy as possible. For example, running with too large a stride results in a pretty major heel impact, which is essentially like putting on the brakes. Over the course of a mile where that foot may be striking the ground 1000 times, the wasted energy adds up.
Magic miles are not a drill, per-se, but apparently a predictive tool for performance. Essentially all it is is a mile run where you go as fast as possible, and by the time the mile is up, you feel like you couldn't go more then another 100 yds at that pace. Once you have some numbers for these magic miles, you can get some predictive idea of performance for various races.
Leg 1: 8:38 (1 mile warmup)
Leg 2: 9:04 (1 mile with 3 acceleration gliders) Avg HR 152
Leg 3: 7:01 (Magic Mile) Avg HR 179
Leg 4: 4:34 (recovery walk)
Leg 5: 21:31 (slow jog to finish)
The magic mile prediction is as follows (from www.jeffgalloway.com):
add 33 seconds for your pace for a 5K
multiply by 1.15 for 10K pace
multiply by 1.2 for half marathon pace
multiply by 1.3 for marathon pace
So - with my magic mile time of 7 minutes, I could theoretically run a 5k race at a pace of 7:33 min/mile. My half marathon pace would be at about 8:24 min/mile for a finishing time of about 1:50:02. Based on my performance the other week in the half marathon, I can see being able to drop about 4-5 minutes at my current level of conditioning.
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