One of my goals is to break 5:00 in the mile again (that is, 1600 meters, which is actually ~9 meters short of a mile).
There’s something about breaking a threshold like a 5 minute mile that makes for an attractive goal. Earlier this year, I was able to break 3:00:00 in the marathon. My main goal was to qualify for Boston, but for some time I had also had my eyes on a sub 3 hour marathon.
While I was still training for that marathon I ran a 5k fun run and realized that a sub 5 minute mile might be within striking distance. Nevertheless, I haven’t done any mile-specific training. Pretty much all of my training has been targeted at improving my marathon time. This includes long runs, temp runs of 4-8 miles, and intervals. The intervals have almost all been 800 meters or longer and at times closer to a 5:40 to 6:15 mile pace.
Nevertheless, I’ve been wanting to test myself in a mile for a few months. I’ve done mile intervals in the morning, but with no competition and doing multiple repeats means that my pace is always slower than my best.
After the XC12K I ran into my former cross country coach, Tracy Harris, who had just finished a training run. He still coaches at the high school a few miles from my house, and I found out that he was planning on a mile time trial in a couple weeks. This immediately piqued my interest.
A couple weeks later I showed up at 7:30pm to run a 1600 with a bunch of high schoolers. I felt a little silly, but I was excited to have someone to compete with. After a couple miles of warming up, it was time to run. I wasn’t very apprehensive until I actually lined up, but once I felt the nervousness I was excited because I knew I needed to be on edge to run my best.
There were actually three groups running, with the fastest running first. I debated which I should join since I didn’t know my capability, but I ultimately decided to join the varsity boys and girls in the first heat. There was a former college runner to pace us, so I wasn’t the only non-high schooler.
The race went really well. My first 200 was at about 37s, and my first 400 was around 74s. My second lap was my slowest at about 80s. Then I began passing some other runners as I quickened my pace back to around 75s for the final two laps. I got pretty light-headed towards the end of the race, but I was quite pleased when I came across in 5:06.
That was just 7 seconds away from my goal! I’m looking forward to doing some shorter intervals and working toward a 4:59. I’m certain that I can achieve it, barring an injury. My PR from high school is 4:34, and part of me is even beginning to wonder about that… but we’ll see how the next year or two go first.