I guess I would answer you question two ways. First, the recommendations on his web site are in my mind more of a starting point. I would experiment like it sounds like you have with ratio's a little bit high or a little bit lower than he recommends.
Second, I tend to think of the logic the other way around. If you can do your longer run or races at a 10 minute mile, a run 3/walk 1 is your best way of doing it. And in Galloway's mind that pace is tied to your Magic Mile. For your half marathon pace to be a 10:00 mile, Galloway says your MM should be 8:20. In order to run a 10:00 mile (assuming a 15:00 min. Mile walk pace), theoretically you could do any of the following
Run 3 minutes at about a 9:00 mile/Walk 1 minute at a 15:00 mile
Run 2 minutes at about an 8:30 mile/Walk 1 minute at 15:00 mile
Run 4 minutes at about a 9:15 mile/walk 1 minute at 15:00
(I used the
following website for these times)
It's my assumption that Galloway's recommendation are attempting to balance run distance and run speed given your magic mile time. In my hypothetical example, to be able to run a 10:00 mile using 2/1 you would need to run at just off your 1 mile pace (Not something your likely to be able to do over long distances). 3/1 is his recommended ratio. Going to 4/1 allows you to run a little slower but your running an extra minute every cycle. But, that's all build around your MM pace.
Looking at it from a more practical since. For along time, I found my pace tends to be fairly constant over a variety of run/walk intervals and beyond that, my speed tends to be more U shaped. I tend to get slower at both extremes of run/walk ratios. For example. For along time when I went run 1/1 to 2/1 I would get slower, because I couldn't run as fast, and when I started walking I would walk slower.
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