Monday, June 23, 2008

Mildly Encouraging Mile Time

Firstly, a good series of blogs by Eric below! Very interesting international running blogs!

As for myself, I am still running in boring, flat Buffalo, NY. After being sick, and doing minimal running for a week, I ran a 20 mile week or so, then last Friday, I surprised myself with a 5:40 mile, 8 seconds better than my previous best for this year, 3 seconds faster than last year's best time, and even more surprising, my best mile since a 5:36 in July 2005. Now I have some real incentive to continue improving, as I feel like I can "turn back the clock" a little on this aging process. If I break 5:36, it will be my best mile in 3 years, and if I break 5:34, it will be my best mile in 4 years. I could almost say it would be my best mile in about 7 years, because I only ran 5:35 in 2003, and 5:38 in 2002. To improve beyond that is where the problems start, because in 2001 I made an assault on sub-5, running a 5:04 in February, and a 5:03 in December (both indoors).

Anyway, my first goal will be sub 5:34, then the next goals will be sub-5:29.

Any thoughts or advice? I've been running about 20 mile weeks, with a little tennis, and my "speed" workouts have been 4 mile runs with the middle 2 miles run at about a 6:35 per mile pace. Is it time to break down and do some intervals on the track???

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