Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Mile Attempt - #4

Hello Runners!,
We're nearing the end of the month and I still haven't done a timed mile attempt for the month of June.  Sure I ran a 1500 on Sunday, but not quite a mile.  A combination of some hard weeks of training and some unfavorable weather caused me to keep pushing the mile attempt further in the month.  I ran a nice 10 miles on Monday so I can't really say that I took it easy or even rested leading up to this attempt.


Today was a good day for running.  The temperature was around 75 with around a 10mph wind into the home-stretch.  As usual, I arrived at the track about 15 minutes before everyone else shows up.  I did a nice and easy warm-up of 1 mile around the track.  As I was stretching out, a few people slowly showed up for practice.  Jay wasn't one of them, which I thought was a bit odd because he's usually one of the first to show.  When Jill arrived she told me Jay couldn't make practice today because he had to work late.  Damn, looks like I'd be doing this timed mile on my own.  I had been sitting around for a little while so I decided to do another mile to warm-up for a 2nd time.  When I arrived back at the track Jill said Jay had just called and that he would be here in around 10-15 minutes and if I wanted I should just do the timed mile on my own.  It was a bit of a dilemma for me.  I would much rather do the timed mile with a running partner than on my own, but if I waited for Jay that means I would probably have to do a 3rd warm-up before the attempt.  Since a few other people were going to run the timed mile immediately, I decided to run with them and not wait for Jay.


I lined up on the track and did a short sprint just to get my legs a little loose and to get the heart-rate up a bit.  I stepped to the line.  Scott (our official timer on Tuesday) gave the shout of "go" and we were off.  I knew the others doing the timed mile wouldn't be anywhere near my pace so it was on my own.  My plan coming into the race was to try and run even splits, right around 80 sec per lap.  I looked at my watch at the 200m mark and noticed I was at 40 sec, right on an 80 sec lap pace.  I came through the first 400m in 82 seconds.  My next two laps were even splits at 79 seconds.  By the time I finished my third lap, my feet were BURNING.  I was gasping for air and my legs were feeling drained.  I pushed on.  With about 150 meters to go my legs felt like giving out but I focused on getting my knees up, running on my toes and "sprinting" to the finish.  My final lap was 78 seconds, for a final mile time of 5:19.  I was SUPER happy with this time.  I was confident I could go under 5:20 and I did.  It was a 12 second improvement over my last timed mile.  Nonetheless, I still need to drop 5 seconds per lap to run under 5 minutes. 
Final Splits:
Lap 1: 82 sec
Lap 2: 79 sec
Lap 3: 79 sec
Lap 4: 78 sec
TOTAL: 5:19 


Jay showed up to the track right as I was running my final lap.  After the finish and a few minutes for me to recover, I asked Jay if he was still planning on running his timed mile today.  His answer was kind of non-committal so I offered to pace him for 2 laps.  After a short warm-up (for Jay), it was back to the track.  Still somewhat exhausted from my mile, I wasn't sure how well I would be able to pace him.  I took off like a bat-out-of-hell, with Jay right on my heels.  We flew through the first 200m in 36 seconds, the first 400m in 74 seconds.  We slowed down a little on the 2nd lap, running a 79 sec lap for a 2:34 half mile.  I dropped off after the half mile point, completely spent.  Jay gave it for the next two laps, running around 80 sec per lap.  He ended up finishing in 5:15, a season best for him.


What a huge day of running today.  Jay and I both dropped our previous mile times by 12-15 seconds.  I am confident that had we run the mile together we could have even run a couple of seconds quicker.  It's always a bit easier to run when you have someone to pace off of or someone right on your heels to push you.  


We finished the workout by running 2x400 with about 2 minutes of rest between the two.  I ran even splits, 73 seconds each.  Overall, I'm very happy with the workout.  I'm starting to feel stronger and I can tell that my stride is getting longer the more we do speed workouts.  The plan for the rest of the week is to run around 7 miles tomorrow and then hit up the track again on Thursday.  Thursday is supposed to be in the mid-90's, so it's going to be a short work-out.  I'll take Friday as a rest day, do something easy on Saturday and then try to get in a 9-10 miles on Sunday.  It was a great day of running and I'm really starting to see results from all the training I've been doing.  Good night and good luck... running that is!

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