Week 8: Mile Time Trial

Today was the day of the mile time trial. A chance to show off your speed for the Hicham El-Guerroujes among us.

The concept is simple. Run a mile at a pace you are comfortable with.. plus one. One gear higher than your normal weekday or long run pace. Not too hard so that you have to walk the last 400m, not too slow that you are singing happy days at the end of the run. You get the drift.

The trial is held at a school 400m track. It's a dirt track, that makes it a little tougher than the regular rubberized surface.

And we're off....

I get off to a steady start. I'm not pushing myself too hard; something I ate last night is not agreeing with me. But I don't want to drop too far back. So I push it a little bit more. Curse the damn ego!!

I'm spent after the four laps. That was tough. Running hard over that long a stretch is not easy. Turns out this is something we're going to have to do every Tuesday starting this week. Oh Joy!

How did I do? 7m35s for the one mile. If this was being scored like Golf, that's about par for the course. Not too shabby. Some people did it in 6m20s thereabouts. There was no way I was going to do that.

That was the point of the exercise, to separate people into 4 groups based on your speeds. Nothing carved in stone, the coaches say you can switch groups if you like. This is just to avoid stepping on each others toes.. literally.