Jeff Galloway, Olympian who transformed American distance running, dies at 80.
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
By JERÉ LONGMAN
Jeff Galloway, a seminal figure in American distance running as an Olympian, bestselling author, coach, pioneering shoe-store owner and creator of the run-walk-run strategy that hundreds of thousands have used in races from marathons to turkey trots, died Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida. He was 80.
His death, in a hospital, was from complications of a stroke, his son Westin said. He had a home in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, east of Pensacola.
Galloway was present for, or participated in, landmark moments in the evolution of American distance running. He once held the national record for the 10-mile run. And while he did not win an Olympic medal or a major marathon or set a world record, he was described last year as “the most important person in the history of American distance running” by RUN, a digital media platform, for his broad impact on the sport.
Galloway ran track and cross-country at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, receiving a bachelor’s degree in history in 1967. Two of his teammates were Amby Burfoot, who won the 1968 Boston Marathon, and Bill Rodgers, who won the New York City and Boston marathons four times apiece from 1975 to 1980.
At the 1972 Munich Olympics, Galloway ran the 10,000 meters, while his fellow American Frank Shorter won gold in the marathon, a victory widely considered to have inspired the first U.S. running boom. Galloway’s enduring contribution was to help make running accessible to the masses.
“He was the proselytizer or evangelist for everyday people who had no idea they could be runners,” Burfoot said in an interview.
Rodgers said that he considered Galloway one of the five most influential figures in American distance running, along with Shorter; Steve Prefontaine, the trailblazing runner of the 1970s; Kenneth H. Cooper, the Dallas-based physician who popularized jogging and cardiovascular fitness with his groundbreaking 1968 book “Aerobics”; and Joan Benoit Samuelson, who won the inaugural women’s Olympic marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
“Jeff reminded me of a Southern preacher,” Rodgers said. “He truly believed in all the good this simple sport can do for almost anybody.”
In 1973, Galloway founded what is often credited as the original specialty running store, Phidippides, named after the ancient Greek messenger. He and his wife, Barbara, eventually opened about 60 stores nationwide. Earlier in his career, when money was short, Galloway was known to sometimes wear plastic bags over his shoes to preserve them when he ran on rainy days.
He began experimenting with the run-walk-run strategy — variously called “Jeffing,” “Gallowalking” and the “Galloway method” — in 1974. The idea was to draw a broader audience into running.
While walking was once considered a weakness during distance races, the run-walk strategy has since been used by an estimated 350,000 or more beginner, intermediate and aging runners, who take scheduled walk breaks to reduce fatigue, minimize risk of injury and sometimes maintain a faster overall pace.
At the 1980 Houston Marathon, at age 35, Galloway walked at every water station and completed the 26.2-mile race faster — in 2 hours 16 minutes 35 seconds — than he ever had by running nonstop, including at the 1974 Honolulu Marathon, which he won in 2:23:02.
“The main reason people get discouraged when they start a running program is that they either get hurt or they get so exhausted that they don’t want to continue doing it,” he told Men’s Health magazine in 2024. “The run walk run method takes that all away.”
John Franks “Jeff” Galloway was born on July 12, 1945, in Raleigh, North Carolina. His peripatetic family settled in Atlanta, where his parents, Elliott and Katherine (Warren) Galloway, known as Kitty, founded a progressive private school called The Galloway School in 1969. Both parents became runners, and in 1996 Elliott Galloway ran the 100th Boston Marathon alongside his son.
When Galloway was a “fat 13-year-old,” as he described himself, he nervously took up running at a school that required athletic participation; though he struggled early on, the activity made him feel empowered, he said.
By the time he finished high school, he had run a 4:28 mile and won a Georgia state championship in the 2-mile race. At age 18, in 1963, when few high school or college runners attempted a marathon, Galloway defeated a small field to win the Atlanta Marathon (also then called the Peach Bowl Marathon) in 2:57:20.
When Burfoot arrived at Wesleyan in the fall of 1964, he said, he realized that he and Galloway shared “the same mind, spirit and passion.”
Galloway’s greatest success would come later, after serving three years in the U.S. Navy, from which he was discharged in 1970. In 1972, he received a master’s degree in social studies from Florida State University. There, he met his future wife, a varsity runner, and decided to try to qualify for the 1972 Olympic track and field team.
He trained in the same group as future Olympians Shorter and Jack Bacheler, who became his mentors and helped guide his steady improvement. After training at altitude for two months in Vail, Colorado, Galloway qualified for the Munich Olympics in the 10,000 meters. He also competed in the Olympic marathon trials, in which he selflessly helped pace Bacheler to a spot on the team.
“The best part was bowing to my good friend at the finish so that he could finish third,” the final qualifying spot, Galloway wrote years later on his website.
After his elite career ended, Galloway found other avenues to promote running and its health benefits. He wrote more than 20 books, including the 1984 bestseller “Galloway’s Book on Running”; gave clinics and speeches; ran training camps; and in 1978 cofounded in Atlanta the first of the international marathons that Avon, the skin care and cosmetics company, held for women as precursors to the race’s Olympic inclusion in 1984.
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