Still Short of a 10 Minute Mile

This morning Rosie and I worked out with the Southern Cal Walkers. After warming up we did one lap slow, the next faster and so on until we were at about 70% of race pace on the 4th lap. Then we did a timed mile--another 4 laps.

This was my chance to try for a 10 minute mile, but I didn't quite reach that goal.

1st 400 meters - 2:36.00
2nd 400 meters - 2:34.40
3rd 400 meters - 2:36.40
4th 400 meters - 2:41.25
1 Mile - 10:28.05

I tried to pace myself by following Carl Acosta. The first lap was a little slow and we both picked it up on the second lap. On the third lap I was starting to get tired and when I saw that my time went up I slacked off because I knew I couldn't make up for it on the last lap.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't really a mile either, 1,600 meters=0.9941939072000000266 miles. As long as I was going for accuracy I also recorded my time in hundredths of a second. Of course this didn't make any difference, I didn't walk a 10 minute mile. The good news is that I didn't do any more damage to my knees.

As a comparison, if you can call it that, just yesterday Tim Seaman walked a 5:51.18 mile at the 100th Milrose Games in Madison Square Gardens. What made this even more impressive was that he was pushing hard last Sunday at the 50km Championships in Chula Vista. He didn't finish the 50k in California but recovered to place first in New York.