Mile Challenge

There’s some sort of marathon taking place in DC tomorrow that is not the Marine Corps Marathon. While I don’t understand why anyone would wake up extremely early in the morning to run 26.2 miles, I certainly admire their determination and fitness level. Meanwhile, I’m just trying to run one mile.

Back in high school, I consistently ran a mile in just over seven minutes with a fastest time of 6:49. While this was not close to Roger Bannister’s sub four-minute mile, I thought it was pretty good. Recently, I decided that I want to see if I can get back to running a seven-minute mile. Actually, I just wanted to know how quickly I could run a mile. Although I feel like I’m in decent shape due to soccer refereeing, this is a different type of running. While working as a ref, I sprint, stop, walk, sprint, jog, etc. There’s no continuous rhythm or pace as there is for a longer run.

So two weeks ago, I hopped on my treadmill and ran one mile. The time: 8 minutes and 38 seconds. Not bad, but not really good. When I ran in high school, I ran at my own speed on a track. In this case, I attempted to adjust the treadmill to keep up with my increasing or decreasing speed. This was definitely not the most efficient way to time myself. Last week, I tried again, but did worse. My time was 9 minutes and 15 seconds largely because I started the mile too quickly and needed to slow down to walk for part of the time. Again, the treadmill isn’t my friend for this challenge. I need to find a track and just run.

So if you don’t mind, I plan on sharing my times over the next few months (or until I get bored with this).