Friday, October 31, 2008

How fast can I run a mile?

If the individual time trial is the race of truth in cycling, then the track is the place of truth in running.  You can be in any city and in any country, but a 400M track is a 400M track no matter where you are.  Before I started cycling I used to go to the Kezar track at least 2 times a week for interval workouts, but I had not been there in nearly 2 years when I showed up today.

Since I began running again during the off season, I've only been doing lunch runs twice a week along the Embarcadero with no sense pace, but I guess that I've been running between 7 min and 7:30 miles.  

This morning I was going to go for a ride, but it was raining, so I decided to go for a run instead and ended up at Kezar.  I was reluctant to step inside the gates, but it looked pretty deserted except for the groundskeeper getting the field ready for the next HS football game, so I went in and jogged down to the track.  The plan was to try and run a 6 min mile, starting with a 90 and if I felt good I would pick it up on the last lap.  I was sure to start on the mile start line that is about 9.5M behind the start line since this is a 400M track.

On the first lap I surprised myself and ran a 79, but about 200M later really started to tighten up and I could feel myself slowing down.  I came through the half mile in 2:42, then slowed down a little more, coming through 3/4 in 4:06.  The last lap really hurt.  I hadn't felt this flavor of pain in quite some time and just pushed on through the line in 5:27.  

Not as far from Sub 5 shape as I thought, I think I can get back there with a few interval workouts.

After my run, Karin and I finally went to the Academy of Sciences and had a lot of fun.

4 comments:

Stefan said...

Chris, nice meeting you today between Danville and Alamo. Enjoyed the 28 mph draft ;-)
Stefan aka Pommi

phipps said...

Stefan,

Good to see you too. It was a great day for a ride. I need to get over to the east bay more often.

Marco Fanelli said...

Chris,
Your ability to mix riding and running is really impressive. Will you continue to run when the bike-racing season comes around? How much impact would it have on your cycling if you did continue running? Seems like from a general-health perspective, it would be good to keep the variety, but most bike racers are so obsessive/compulsive that they go 100% cycling.

phipps said...

I've never run during the cycling season before, so I'll probably stop once the serious training starts. I really don't think that running and cycling compliment each other well when trying to compete at a high level.

I like the variety for now though.