I still have my sights set on shorter races, including the mile, in the upcoming year. As of late November, I was feeling good about this. I had just posted an 18:42 5K and I was ready for some speedwork. Then, there was an upper quad tweak. Following that, I had two nasty cold bugs in the span of a month. My knee was off this past weekend when I’d hoped to finally start some speed work. While I have been logging maintenance miles, that’s about all I’ve been doing. It’s better than nothing, but I’m also not quite where I was in November.
On Tuesday, since my knee was feeling better and I had been feeling solid (meaning cold-free) for several days, I decided to do another all-out mile on the treadmill to get a sense of my current speed. It was disappointing to set my goal time at just under 6:00 but I knew it was prudent, given my lack of speed training and overall mileage.
Ideally in a race such as the mile, you want to run at an even pace, with the possibility of the final quarter being the fastest. I decided to set the treadmill at 10.0 mph at the beginning, moving it to 10.1 at 150 meters and 10.2 at 300 meters. On a treadmill, it takes it a few moments to get up to the speed you want. While I went right into the mile from a 7.5 mph warm-up pace and my time from the start line to full 10.0 was shorter than if I had started from the stop position, it is a factor. By quickly moving to 10.1 and then 10.2, I hoped to keep the first lap to 90 seconds or even 89. The second quarter being the one where PRs are not set and races are not won, I would back it down to 10.1. I would then push it back up to 10.2 for the final two quarters. This meant covering each quarter in roughly 88-89 seconds. Finally, I set the treadmill at 1.0 incline to offset the fact that the belt is driving the speed.
Though part of my goal was to run evenly paced laps, I also was open to cranking up the speed at the end if I felt I could hold it, even more than you would do on a final kick. While not ideal in terms of pace training, without knowing my current speed ability, it seemed more important to get to a faster time. Pacing and patience always requires work, but this one time would be okay to have a disproportionate quarter, if I was feeling it.
Though parts of the run hurt more than I would like to admit, given the various factors of the prior six weeks, including lack of speedwork (and I had been eating Super Bowl party food for two days straight), I was okay with the result. I crossed the “line” at either a 5:55 or 5:56 but in the interest of keeping my balance, I’m not sure that I hit the button right when I completed the mile.
I would have been tempted to really go all-out on the final 200 meters, such as 11 mph or 82/quarter pace except that if you lose control on a treadmill, it’s bad. I had done an 82 quarter on it the prior week and I actually was going faster than the belt. This was great until I stepped on the plastic casing at the front. I didn’t fall but I was thrown off balance and it is some doing to reset your stride on a belt moving at that speed. I probably could have run the last 200 meters at that pace and thus knocked a couple more seconds off, but the price wasn’t worth it.
This coming week, I’ll throw in a few speed surges during my workouts to start getting my body acclimated to it. Hopefully within the next week or two, I’ll be able to start doing more dedicated speed workouts. I doubt my first all-out competitive mile will be until the early summer so there is still time.
Last but not least, I will be shifting to an every-other-week publication schedule for the Untamed Runner. You may have noticed a few missed weeks over the past several months and even during my first year, there were a few times when I did dedicated food review posts instead of a training or race feature. I’m never at a shortage of conversation or information about running, yet my goal is to publish helpful and engaging posts and not to publish for the sake of publishing. Moving to an every other week schedule will help ensure that remains the case.
Running anecdotes, running food reviews, some race coverage, and more