The Best 2 Laps of the Day

This morning the alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. and I got up to get ready for my run. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have been going to the gym early to get my run in so I have the afternoons free to spend with my three girls. As I arrived at the gym at 5:30, I saw my three running companions who each run at least 6 miles every time they are there. In some ways it's like running with someone except that they run at their own pace. Today's run was for 8 miles + 10/100m strideouts.

The strideouts today went well and I have figured out an easy way to run them on the treadmill. I started off at 5.0 mph and increased the speed to 9.0 mph and ran that for .05 miles (80 meters). Then I slowed it back to 5.0 mph and jogged that until .1 miles. Then I increased the speed again, this time to 9.1 mph until .15 miles. Again, I decreased the speed to 5.0 mph and jogged until .2 miles. I continued in this pattern every 1/10 of a mile until I finished 10 sets of 100m strideouts with a short jogging/rest period in between. For the last 100m strideout, I ran it at 10mph. As I thought about the last strideout, I looked on the monitor and saw that I was running at a 6:00 mile pace. I was physcially pushing the pace and struggling to hold on, and all I could think was, "elite marathoners run more than 1 minute per mile faster than this pace for 26 MILES?!? " Unbelievable!

Here are the numbers for the run:

8.0 miles/1:13:30/9:11 pace

At school today, my 5th grade students had P.E. at the end of the day. We're currently working on physical fitness testing and one of the areas tested is the one-mile run. As you can imagine, 5th grade students don't like to run AT ALL! I've been trying to preach to them the virtues of running, but to little avail. So, I tried a different approach today. We only had 15 minutes for P.E. today, so I decided to run with them. I ran with some of the slower runners and encouraged them to breath from their stomachs, relax their arms and shoulders, and run at a slower pace so they could complete the 2 laps without stopping to rest. It was fun running with them and I think they enjoyed seeing their teacher run with them.