Mile time
Since taking up running again three years ago I’ve raced a lot of distances from 5K to marathon, and I’ve incorporated virtually every distance into interval training, but I hadn’t really timed myself in an all out mile. I vaguely recall timing myself at an all out mile between two mile markers on the bike trail near my house when I was in my early 20s. As I recall I ran something under 6 minutes, possibly as fast as 5:45, but I never wrote it down and I’m not really sure. In the last three years I’ve run mile intervals, and I’ve occasionally timed myself to see how fast I can run a mile, but I’ve never really made an all out attempt to run one mile as fast as I can. My fastest timed mile in the last three years had been a bit over 6:01 over the first leg of one of my 5K races this year.
Yesterday I decided to see, once and for all, how fast I can run a mile. The previous day I had run 11.2 miles, so I knew my legs might be just a bit heavy, but they felt O.K. I started running at about 9:30, and the temperature was still decent but climbing rapidly (it reached 100 degrees yesterday by late afternoon). I ran slowly (ave. around 9 minute pace) down to the river and along the trail to the 11 mile mark, about 2.1 miles from my house. I took my Garmin with me to help me pace myself, since I knew it would be hard to keep pace without it. I used the training assistant feature, which, when I started my mile, would tell me at all times how many feet I was ahead or behind my goal time. I set a goal time of 5:55 minutes, got a start running toward the mile mark, and pushed start as I sped past the mark.
Since I hadn’t really tried running this distance like this, it felt unfamiliar. I’ve run half mile intervals that fast but not miles. After 400 meters I was well ahead of my pace, 60 feet or more ahead, but that number started dropping after that. I managed not to fall behind pace, though, and with 300 meters to go I pushed harder to see how fast I could go. I finished in 5:52. It was tiring but not exhausting; under race conditions I think I could have gone under 5:40, but it’s very hard to keep pushing yourself at that speed when you’re running alone.
So, my first mile ended at 5:52, and that gives me a good bench mark to try to improve upon. I think I can realistically get that time down to 5:35 this fall, although it may be difficult if I don’t concentrate on the mile as a goal distance. Focus now is on the upcoming half marathon, then the 10K in November, then the marathon in December.
September 28, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Keep putting up those inspiring times. Sometimes during High Schhol inivational track meets here they will include a peoples race at a mile. Hope you can find such a race.