Time trial

The other day members of the running club were timed to see how fast they can run a mile. It was done as part of a Run and Bowl social event. Take the time, in seconds, how fast one runs a mile on the track on Tuesday, and then subtract the highest bowling score of two games on Thursday, and that is a person's score. The lowest score wins some prize, as well as the highest (maybe?). If that is the case then I have a shot of winning the highest score. I was able to complete the mile in 8:14, my fastest mile by almost 30 seconds!

Fortunately I was able to complete the mile. Setting things up, I arrived at VHS and did my warm-up. One lap of walking followed by 5 laps of a jog. Or what I thought was a jog. Halfway thru my jog I was joined by others in the club and they tod me that we were going at a 9 minute pace. That may have been slow to them but not really that slow for me. When the rest of the group showed up, our official warm-ups started. We did 4 sets of 200s, a "fast" 200 followed by a "slow" 200, and then do that for four laps. I pretty much followed behind people and hung out at the back with Brandy. We did our 4 laps at a little over 9 minutes, and that included slow 200s! We weren't looking forward to the mile.

We followed this warm up with some strides, and it actually felt good to just run a little faster than normal. I like being able to take longer strides for the really short distance knowing that I have about 30 seconds in between strides, plenty of time to rest up. After the strides and some time to rest some more, we were given our instructions. Line up along the curved line, start about a step behind actually until told "Runners set", and then take off at "Go". There was a clock about 9 meters past the finish line, since 5280 feet is 1609 meters, so we were told not to stop running until we past the clock and go into the chute set up past the clock.

I made sure to start off at lane 6 - that's me above as the "gun went off", giving the faster runners enough room for the inside. Off we went and I got in a rhythm, which I thought was a bit fast. The runners ahead of me slowly got further ahead but by 200 meters they were only about 20 meters ahead. This s when I knew I was going a little too fast for my own good. I yelled out to Brandy that I think I was going too fast. She quickly said, "Yes, you are". So I slowed down to let her catch up. As we turned the corner for the last 100 of the first lap I could see thclock and it read 1:25! Positive proof that I was going too fast. I was hoping to go for 2:10 first lap but at this pace we were going for to cross at 1:53. Since I was a little ahead I had to set thepace for the two slow runners. We finally crossed at 1:59. We slowed the pace a little more and crossed the line on our second lap at 4:06.

We continued with this pace and finished lap 3 at 6:16. At this point I knew we were both going to get new personal bests for our mile. It didn't matter that most of the others passed us - the first one to pass us was at about the 600m mark, the second one just before we finished the curve into the straightaway to the finish line, and most passed us as we were crossing the line. Then we had the track all to ourselves. Finally able to get to the inside lanes we picked up the pace a little. At 1400m we kicked it up a notch, relatively speaking. Brandy and I were still side by side until the last 30m when I somehow was able to lengthen my strides a little more and finished maybe two seconds ahead. She did give me credit for running on the outside of her for the whole distance, which probably meant an extra 20 meters. Regardless I just finished my fastest mile and I was ecstatic, although too tired to really show it. I know one mile doesn't a runner make, but it lets me know that I have plenty of room to improve and that 2 hour half marathon is ripe for the picking. Ripe especially since I have almost three months to train for it.