While I have run 50-mile races before, I have never run a single mile as fast as I could. Given how many people at running club talk about the Summer Mile, I decided it was time to change that.
Before the race, I suggested to Toby that I would like to try and hit six minutes. He said he had never managed such a time. This statement worried me quite a lot as Toby can run a marathon an hour faster than me. Luckily, he can now also run a mile much faster as he proved in a later heat.
I positioned myself near the back but soon found myself overtaking some of my fellow competitors and even found myself on the heels of JP by the one-kilometre point. In the end, I finished in:
5:38.0
That was gun time, my actual chip time was 5:36.3. I was really pleased as it was good enough for the 8th fastest Harrier (out of 40) and ahead of some of the runners I look up to in the club. With COVID, it’s difficult to know where everyone is at with training. I didn’t do any training for this, and indeed sandwiched it in a one-hour easy run that followed a 50-minute swim, but I don’t mean to suggest I wasn’t trying: I’m three weeks away from Outlaw so I’m in the best shape of my life. I know others haven’t been so lucky to stay motivated during lockdown.
A big thank you to everyone at the club and beyond who volunteered to make the event happen, especially Sam for organising. Thanks too to Anne for the photo.
Don't have time to check my blog? Get a weekly email with all the new posts. This is my personal blog, so obviously it is 100% spam free.
Tags: running
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2021 at 11:00 am and is filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.