30 seconds

Same time, same place ... only this time I ran a mile 30 seconds faster than two months ago.

Injuries are interesting. With my tail bone injury, I wasn't put to a complete stop, but I had to cut back for a couple of weeks and I had to really slow down. So when the first of this month rolled around, I was a bit worried about doing my "mile test" -- a simple thing that I decided to do at the beginning of each month this summer. My first test was June 2, when I ran a mile at close to all-out effort in 7:55. It's worth noting that my overall run that day was 3.2 miles. The next test was July 1, with an improvement of 7 seconds to hit 7:48. My overall mileage that day was 3.7 miles.

This month's test was delayed a bit to get my long run in this weekend, and my timing was off a bit with my runs last week. So I decided to wait until today to do it. When I started I had this feeling that I started too fast. But instead of slowing down, I felt like I kept the same pace for the entire mile. When my watch hit the mile mark, I was shocked and very happy that it read 7:25. I felt even better that I maintained the same pace and that I didn't want to throw up at the end. My overall mileage today was 5 miles.

To have the feeling that I could've kept going is one of the goals of doing this mile test. It's not a 100 percent race-pace effort -- it's a push-yourself-almost-to-the-max effort. To improve 30 seconds in two months with an injury in between is a success for me. I think a couple of months ago I would have loved to have shaved off a minute, but I'll take what happened today.

I avoided any other speed work today because I'll be doing some sort of tempo run Friday to have a decent time in Friday's 8 on the 8th, which will turn into my long run for the week. For those interested in doing something related to 08-08-08, I suggest that you take part in this event. Of course you don't have to run 8 on the 8th -- it can just be sometime over the weekend. You can run it as fast or as slow as you'd like. My goal is to just make it part of a 10 or 11 mile run, with a tempo of 3-4 miles thrown in.


Workouts since last post
Aug. 5: Walk - 1; Run - 4.2
Aug. 6: Walk - 1; Run - 5 (7:25 mile)