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My Timed Mile

I've been trying to do some speed-work as a means to ease myself back into long-distance running, so I've been trying to go the track twice a month.  The sessions have been pretty short so far, because I'm new to this and frankly don't want to give myself a reason to skip sessions.  For now, they are all in fun, to establish a baseline that I can frequently "race against."

It has been quite a number of years since I timed my mile -- almost six!  If I ever want to run faster in half-marathons and marathons, working on the 1-mile segments seems like a good approach.

This has been a really tough week.  Most days, I was out from dawn to dusk, and one night, I worked overtime for so long that my feet were purple from the high-heels that I had to wear (it was a high-profile event, so flats wouldn't cut the dress code, sadly).  So I didn't really want to wake up too early, though it was kind of a must since the temperatures have spiked.

"The Ukrainian" didn't bring his watch (because he was too lazy to wear one), so he ended up being my "rabbit."  We did a warm-up and then these three intervals, with walk/job breaks in between.

1 mile: 7:43.2
800 m: 3:21.2
400 m: 1:27.9

My previous mile time was 7:59, so I'm happy about the 16-second improvement!  In fact, I'm considering this an informal PR! ;) I definitely felt out-of-shape doing this timed mile, so I tried to start off slowly and pick up speed with each lap.  I felt tired after the first quarter-mile, and I started feeling my lower back feeling weak and had this feeling that my uterus was going to fall out toward the end.  I know I've mentioned having this feeling before (here and here), so I'm not really sure what it is... it only seems to happen when I'm running much faster than is typical.

While I am okay with my mile time, I think I want to get it closer to 7:05 or so.  So I'll be doing this again!

The 800 m is basically an auto-PR (yay!!), since I have never timed one before.  I know.... amazing.  This felt much better than running a mile, and I actually ran the second lap about 3 seconds or so faster than the first!  Like the mile, I have a goal time that seems rather unattainable, around 3:11.  That pains me just to type it.

The last 400 meters felt easier after those other distances, and I'm happy to have come in faster than my fastest lap two weeks ago.  I'm still happy sticking around 1:35 or so, for now.

Considering the heat, this went pretty well.  It's fun to run knowing that you're going to be done shortly -- sometimes, very shortly.

More to come!

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