T-44 seconds and counting!

Finally, I made it out to the track again last night and ran a mile time trial, this time with the new 5.5-ounce high-tech Nike Lunarlite racing flats! Thanks to Nike (and some training), I managed a 5:43.3, bettering my 5:57 from a month ago. The encouraging news was a fast last lap of 82 seconds, and then within 5 minutes of the time trial, I was able to run 3 400-meter intervals at 81, 81, and 79.8, with 90 seconds rest in between. Still 44 seconds from a sub-5, though, which is a Long way to go! Next Wednesday I'll be running an open mile race to be held at the start of a high school track meet (my old alma mater, Fillmore High). Two other former Fillmore track athletes will be participating, as well as various other runners. It appears that there may be a "bell curve" of runners around the 5:30's, which would be perfect for me right now. My brother is the assistant coach at Fillmore, and has "seeded" me 4th so far! Should be interesting!

Unique Cross Training

Mark Raybuck was spotted Saturday employing an unusual cross training method on the streets of suburban Buffalo, NY. "It helps keep me feeling young, which is what I need most while trying to crack 5 in the mile" Raybuck told reporters.

Raybuck Takes Giant Step Towards Sub-5

Yesterday, Mark Raybuck made great strides towards accomplishing what to some seems like a nearly insurmountable goal.....cracking a 5-minute mile at Age 51. Yesterday, he purchased a pair of 5.5-ounce Nike Lunarlite high-tech racing flats. "Now that I've spent nearly $100 on racing shoes, the sub-5 is nearly in the bag" Raybuck told reporters who were waiting in the Fleet Feet parking lot in Buffalo, NY.

"It would be a shame to spend this much money at my age for racing shoes, and not crack 5." Raybuck has always gone by the common convention that you save 1 second per mile per ounce of shoe weight. Thus, assuming the old racing shoes were about 8 ounces (and the rubber was completely dead), these shoes alone will gain about 3 seconds in a mile attempt. So in reality, he only needs to run about a 5:03 equivalent in the old shoes.

Goofy Garmin

My Garmin Forerunner 205 was acting goofy (again).  It was shutting itself off during workouts.  I've just updated the firmware on the unit itself and also updated the firmware in the GPS chip.  The later was an option offered by the Forerunner firmware update program after it finished updating the Forerunner firmware.

 

Some Google searches reveal that lots of people have a variety of problems with these devices.  The firmware revision history lists many, many bug fixes, quite a few related to the unit turning itself off.