The first 100 miles took a couple months. The next 100 miles took me less than a month. Yesterday’s 7.5-mile run put me almost exactly at the 200-mile mark (200.53 total miles since December 26)!
(Fun fact: Monday night I partied it up for St. Patty’s Day for 7.5 hours; Tuesday I ran 7.5 miles.)
Not only that, but on Sunday I developed a new stride that helps me go faster and use less energy — imagine that! The new technique was an evolving work, and I recently mentioned the pushing off the heel method. However, as it turns out, that was more of a sprint-kick method (“bouncy,” as fellow TnTers observed in Saturday’s 10-mile training run), which makes more sense for fast finishes at the end of a run or a race.
My new stride is simply more of a glide: My legs stay closer to the ground, so I expend less energy. And I go faster — my last two runs have had average paces of 7:57 (Sunday) and 7:56 (yesterday), and I had my fastest pace yet in mile 1 Sunday: 7:24. Before long, maybe on shorter runs I’ll break into my college-era pace of the 6ish-minute mile.
It was like this big aha! moment I had. Being a sprinter, I was running distance like a sprinter, and it only took me nearly 200 training miles to realize this.
Meanwhile, in the latest miles challenge, Magnus has established a dominant lead in the past few days and put himself in a class of his own, with 45.03 since last Thursday (I have 30.4 and Dave has 29.37). At least we can battle it out for second, as Dave predicted.
1 response so far ↓
1 Megan // Mar 19, 2008 at 11:32 am
I am so impressed with your mileage! It’s so cool to think that you’ve run as many miles as I drive in a work week. It also makes me realize that I’m pretty lazy 🙂 CONGRATS!!!