This book's author is a self-confessed recreational runner. In my humble opinion, runners/joggers, especially when starting out (and frequently, even experienced ones), can benefit from a consistently followed run:walk pattern (the unit is minutes, typically).
The idea behind this is that running continuously is hard, especially for beginners. Often, coaches have the newbie runner follow a useful run:walk strategy; run for some given amount of time, then take a walk break for a given time period, then repeat—run again, walk again—indefinitely, or until your target distance (or time) goal is met.
For example, when a beginner runs distances of, say, 5 km or 10 km, (s)he might follow a consistent 5:2 run:walk ...
