Jeff Galloway, the much-loved mentor of many American runners, who became a formative figure in the running movement by his tireless promotion of the sport and its life benefits, died on Wednesday at the age of 80 from complications from a stroke and brain bleeding, Runner’s World has learned.
As a runner of limited talent and limitless dedication, Galloway embodied the idealism of the amateur first running boom in the 1960s and 1970s. After becoming what he called an “unlikely Olympian,” he applied his teaching skills to his love of running, and for more than 50 years he was ingeniously inventive in finding ways to recruit, inspire, and educate runners. He was a pioneer of the run/walk method, also known as the “Galloway Method” or “Jeffing,” which instructed runners to add walking intervals into their runs.
Galloway founded running stores, running groups, running camps, and running travel. He was involved in creating important races, he was one of the sport’s most sought after speakers, he wrote and marketed its best-selling training book, and he continued to adapt by moving into social media, podcasts, and race promotion.
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With this record of innovation and his unequaled reach into the running community, Galloway was probably the most influential single contributor to the evolving running movement in America. Yet he never lost his modesty, his accessibility, or his generous impulse to teach. Many of his followers and clients came to regard him as a personal friend.
Born John F. Galloway (called Jeff), in Raleigh, North Carolina, he was the son of a naval officer, which made for a disrupted childhood. By 1958, in eighth grade, he had attended 14 schools and was, by his own account, an overweight kid with no sports experience who was struggling academically. Trying cross-country, he found that running could be “a boost to my spirit and brain,” and “bestow a sense of hope,” and he discovered the sport’s supportive group dynamics. It took more than two years for him to show any talent, although at Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, he did eventually run a 4:28 mile and win a state high school 2-mile championship (9:48 at age 17).
Running helped him improve academically, and he went on to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. The lack of a high-pressure track program there brought unexpected bonuses—the friendships of Amby Burfoot and Bill Rodgers as cross-country teammates, opportunity to train indoors at Yale with Frank Shorter, and the freedom to compete on weekends in New England’s extensive choice of road races. “I loved running road races,” Galloway said, and that experience helped him become All-American, improving on the track to a 4:12 mile, and 14:10 for 3 miles.
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Galloway, shown here competing in a 15 kilometer race in January 1980 at Stanford Stadium, was an elite runner before becoming a prolific author.
On graduation, at the height of conscription for the Vietnam War, Galloway opted to sign for the officer program of the U.S. Navy, and did active service for 18 months as a gunnery officer off the coast of Vietnam. On brief shore visits, his priority always was to run, as the best way of relieving the stress of war zone service.
On completing three years’ service, his aspiration was to become a teacher, but he also wanted to test his potential as a runner, although he was still not close to international standard. “I wanted to see what I was made of,” he said later. He therefore chose to enroll for a masters in social studies at Florida State University, mainly for access to its good running trails and opportunity to race with Shorter and Jack Bacheler at the Florida Track Club in Gainesville. Galloway now progressively increased his training until he was running 140 miles a week.
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After 12 years of slow improvement, two years of that rigorous regime (including sessions of 30 or 40 x 400m) brought results. He won the inaugural Peachtree 10K Road Race in Atlanta in 1970, a race he helped to create, and at the Boston Marathon he placed 11th in 1971 (2:26:35) and seventh in 1972 (2:20:03). This was still the era of rigid amateurism, so Galloway survived by working part-time in a sandwich shop.
Before the 1972 Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, Shorter arranged for Galloway and Bacheler to join him for two months’ altitude training in Vail, Colorado. Their dedication paid off, and in the 10,000-meter trial, on a hot day, Shorter, Galloway, and Bacheler placed first, second, and fourth, although Bacheler was controversially disqualified for supposed interference as he staggered exhausted around the last lap.
That was the prologue to a famous episode in the Galloway legend. In the marathon trial a week later, Galloway ran the entire distance with Bacheler in equal third place, and then stepped aside at the finish to give his friend the Olympic berth. Galloway thus became an Olympian at 10,000 meters (where he did not reach the final), not the marathon, where he would likely have placed higher than Bacheler’s ninth.
Galloway went on to other successes: fifth at Boston in 1973 (2:21:27), and American 10-mile road record (47:49, 1973), travel with the U.S. track team, a win and a second in the Honolulu Marathon (2:23:02, 1974, 2:19:54, 1975), and quality track PRs of 27:21 for 6 miles and 28:29 for 10,000 meters. At the 1976 Olympic Trials, he improved his marathon to 2:18:29, but that was now only good enough for ninth. He also married Barbara, whom he had met as a track runner at Florida State, and who later ran more than 160 marathons, and became an active partner in his many running-related enterprises.
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Galloway invented the run/walk method, also known as “Jeffing,” a training and racing method that direcs runners to incorporate walk intervals into their runs
Those began with America’s first speciality running store, Phidippides, in about 1973, originally in Tallahassee, later moving to Atlanta. By 1978, there were 35 Phidippides stores nationwide. Galloway built their success on making them full-service running centers, providing different levels of training groups, coaching, information, and simple socializing at the store location. Increasing demand from new runners led him to create the first Jeff Galloway Running Camps in 1975, which were rebranded as Weekend Running Retreats.
Other top runners of that era contributed in various creative ways to the growing running movement, but Galloway was unique in the range of his innovations. As the elite recruiter for the early years of Peachtree, he steered that event’s evolution into one of the world’s most competitive, as well as biggest, road races. In 1978, he was among an Atlanta group who took a proposal for an international women’s marathon to the Avon Corporation, sparking the world-changing Avon Running global circuit of women’s road races. In 1982, he opened running to yet another incipient recruitment pool by setting up Atlanta’s Corporate Challenge. He was also a longtime Runner’s World columnist, training consultant for the Disney series of races, and founder of a race pacing service.
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Most influential of all were his books, more than 20 of them, especially Galloway’s Book on Running (1984), probably the best-selling running-coaching book of all time. In the early years, he marketed it the hard way, carrying copies to seminars and expos on a specially constructed frame strapped on his back. Those who witnessed that quiet persistence never begrudged his evolution into Galloway Productions, Club Jeff, America’s Coach, Jeff’s Store, and the other manifestations of the reach of his mentorship.
Many revere him as the inventor and promoter of the run/walk method (or Gallowalking), the simple legitimizing of timed walk breaks that has enabled thousands to complete long distance races without exhaustion or injury. That idea was one of many that Galloway formed through his continuing study of the science of running. Like other truly great teachers, he was inspiring partly because his material was so well researched, and because he was so good at explaining the methods he advocated.
Part of his accessibility was his commitment to family. He proudly helped his father, Elliott, become a 2:58 marathoner at age 60, and his mother, Emma Katherine, to be a Peachtree finisher into her 80s. Barbara Galloway has her own books and her own race, Barb’s 5K, and Brennan and Westin, their two sons, both contribute to the multifaceted business.
A near-fatal cardiac episode in April 2021, at age 75, shocked many who regarded Galloway as the ultimate role model for ageless daily running. He quickly made it an opportunity to reaffirm lessons that he learned as a novice high school cross-country runner in 1958, that “running empowers you to overcome challenges,” and that “what matters is not what happens to you, but how you respond.”
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Roger Robinson is a highly-regarded writer and historian and author of seven books on running. His recent Running Throughout Time: the Greatest Running Stories Ever Told has been acclaimed as one of the best ever published. Roger was a senior writer for Running Times and is a frequent Runner’s World contributor, admired for his insightful obituaries. A lifetime elite runner, he represented England and New Zealand at the world level, set age-group marathon records in Boston and New York, and now runs top 80-plus times on two knee replacements. He is Emeritus Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and is married to women’s running pioneer Kathrine Switzer.
