What does an injured runner do to pass the time and keep his mind off of running? Why, yes, he goes through his running log books and Garmin 305 history to put together a list of fastest miles run within a workout or race for the last several months! Nothing like a little obsessive/compulsive behavior to alleviate some of the frustration!
I haven't run an all-out mile in many years, so these are just mile splits from either workouts (mostly tempo runs and intervals) and from races.
Here's what I came up with:
These are the total amount of sub-7 miles I've run since last October. So what does this all mean (besides a chance for all of my ultrarunning friends to shake their heads in disappointment over my obsession)? Well, in the words of Sammy Hagar in
There's Only One Way To Rock..."it's all just mental m..." (go look it up). Actually, I guess it means that I'm not terribly fast*. It also makes me want to
work on getting faster (eye rolls from aforementioned ultrarunning friends). And I'm still curious what I could do in a mile time trial if I trained for it. Which I don't intend to do. I would, however, like to increase my overall pace and maybe do a little speed work soon...heel willing. With Ragnar coming up, I'd like to run my legs faster than, oh, say...marathon pace!
That's about all I got right now. If you haven't already, check out the latest
Runner's Round Table episode 85, where I had the pleasure to co-host, along with
Matt,
Margaret,
Toni and
Dan. We talked about staying motivated as aging runners. It was a fun discussion.
[*I know, speed is totally relative. To some, I'm somewhat fast. To others, these are recovery mile times.]
