Eating My Own Poison

By the way, I am eating a bit of my own poison. I haven't raced (really) in twelve years. So I am running weekly time trials at various distance and working them down. I started off pacing Jake through 2 and 3 mile weekly trails that were tough for him but easy for me. Finally I thought that maybe I should find out what this felt like so I began going harder running at about 90-95% effort (perceived not Heart Rate). So they are tempo-hard but not painful.

I was not too surprised that the transition from running 9-10 minute mile paced training runs for months to these would be difficult. Pacing Jake, we ran 2 miles (at our fastest) in 14:42 which felt very easy for me. So last week I ran a 6:44 mile. Typical reverse splits going out in a seven minute pace for the first 400 and then gradually bringing each lap down until I had run the 6:44. No sprint though. Just a strong effort. Very similar to the time trials we used to do years and years ago. Strong but feeling that we could have gone a bit.

Jake said that he thought I could run under 14 but the 6:44 mile equates to a 14:22 so I figured if I could run a similar effort for two miles I would run around that. I decide not to worry about the clock this week and just run. I came through the first mile in just over 7 minutes and felt very decent. I pushed a bit on the second mile and ended up running 13:51. Nothing to write home about but perceptually harder than what I had been doing.

Now if I go back to the mile again in the next week or two, that equates to a 6:29. I don't know if I am up to that but I will find out. In any case I believe I will get there eventually. If not in a week or two then in a month or two. The idea is to simply work it and keep trying to push the times down over the next weeks and months. No big agenda. No races planned. Just a "harder" workout. Progression.

I am just trying to get used to perceptually going fast again over an extended distance.

the 13:51 age graded to a 10:54 at age 30. At age 30 I ran my two mile time trials in the 10:08-10:16 range so if I could get down to the equivalent times, that would be nice.

3 mile warm-up, 2 mile trial, 2 mile warm-down for 7 miles total