Predict My Mile Time

I’ve been waiting for a long time for my tendinitis to go away. Recently I realized that this might not happen (by itself). Almost every single time I try to run more than a few miles, it starts hurting. Something I’ve been considering trying out for a long time is stretching regularly and doing the proper exercises to heal it. I do this once in a while. But recently a much better idea struck me – I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Here it is: don’t ever run more than a few miles, and just run really fast instead. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

I haven’t actually been doing it much, which is part of why I haven’t been blogging lately (I can’t blog if I don’t run… it’s impossible). But there’s another issue with this style of running that doesn’t lend itself to blogging. On long runs (say, 5+ miles), I have a lot of time to think. Lots of time to look at how stupid other people look, lots of time to think about how I have to go to the bathroom, lots of time to listen to really long podcasts, etc. On shorter runs, most of which I’ve done on the treadmill, I just stare at the numbers on the machine the entire time and press the Increase Speed button until I’m about to fly off the treadmill and then I stop. If I keep this up I’m going to have to learn to think faster too, for your sake.

This style of running is better for my goal of running a super fast mile. When you run really long and slow all the time, you get really good at running long and slow. I’ve pretty much mastered that, so it’s time to go back to this other thing I used to do (running short and fast). With the new year approaching, I’ll soon be doing my first timed mile to see how much work this is going to be.

Here’s a fun game: predict my first mile time. Whoever is the closest will get a prize of my choosing (I choose good prizes)!

Hint (maybe): My own guess would probably fall somewhere between 6:15 and 7:15 minutes. But this is purely speculative, I could totally surprise myself either way.

You have a couple weeks to think about this, I’ll probably do my first mile during the first week of the new year. Even more awesome would be if people came out and ran it with me. Details to follow.

Miles run this week: 0
Miles run in 2010: 534.5