8 mile run/walk for my 11 but 12 year old niece at that time

[musculArgirl2]

my niece and i have decided to train to do a slow run walk around the perimiter of mackinac island in a run and walk race on sept 8 which is 8 miles. she's excited. i am kind of too i have to train if my niece is training. i want to use bossman's run walk method do you think i should use that for my niece she's 11 this summer but will be 12 by the time we do the race. She is more in shape than me but she hates running. Any suggestions? I"m thinking the bossman's run walk method since that is nice pace to start out with. but would be open for any suggestions i'm not as postive since she is a child. or as she says a tween.

[musculArgirl2]

the thing is i think the bossman's run walk method is a little too slow for her. She has run a mile in gym class so she could probably already run 30 minutes or close to it.

[fitoverforty]

my niece and i have decided to train to do a slow run walk around the perimiter of mackinac island in a run and walk race on sept 8 which is 8 miles.

If you plan to do it together then it's not too slow for her. You have just under 12 weeks to train. Kids are alot more resilient than adults, and a lot of them can go out and run 3 or 4 miles with NO training at all - but that's not to say that they should. So, in my opinion, while she could probably do the 8 miles at a faster pace than your run/walk method, it is probably the safest route to go. Plus, isn't half the fun of it training together and staying together on race day? I think it's safer for her to stay with you or another adult anyway. With 12 weeks to get ready, you could possibly be faster than you are giving yourself credit for too.

[musculArgirl2]

With 12 weeks to get ready, you could possibly be faster than you are giving yourself credit for too.

thanks for your comments Lynne. i think i could go a little faster than boss's method starting out but the thing is my feet. i don't want to reinjure my feet. They are doing pretty good as long as i'm walking. but i may need to do a slower method just to take it easy on them. One of my sister's is running it too with her husband so my niece could run with them if she wanted too but that would kind of leave me doing the race alone. I guess your right though it really is fun to do it together and i can only do what i can do so she will have to go along with that pace. and it is fun training together. we can't run together we live too far away but we have a group on facebook so we can post each time we make our training goal that day. and it does make it fun i think to do it together.

When i first suggested bossman's method she kind of said she could go faster than that. That is why i started thinking maybe it's too slow for her. the thing is too bossman's method is for running 30 minutes. This is for runwalking 8 miles. So i'm not exaclty sure how we will do it. An we could i suppose build up to running a minute for 6 weeks. and then the next 6 weeks building up our endurance running a minute walking 2 minutes and going further distance than 30 minutes?

any suggestions Lynne or anyone? Thanks again for your input.

[Boss Man]

The running method I espoused is for 30 minutes, but can be lengthened for the more adept, to fit in with longer runs..

i.E. Doubling or tripling the length of walk and run periods each week.

[musculArgirl2]

i decided to do this:

week 1: run 10 seconds walk 2:50 for 30 minutes - 3 times a week
week 2: run 20 seconds walk 2: 40 for 35 minutes - 3 times a week
week 3: run 30 seconds walk 2:30 for 40 minutes - 3 times a week

etc.

at the end of 12 weeks we should be running 2 minutes and walking 1 minute for 85 minutes.

i'm just afraid my feet won't hold up. Damn plantar fascitties. I don't want to really injure them though. So if i start to have throbbbing again i will just have to walk the race and let my sister run with my niece if she wants too. but it doesn't hurt to try and see how they do.