Maquinna's Poop du Jour

The Timed Mile

First, a gold star to MOI. I made it to boot camp at 5:30 am every day this week. That alone is a victory, as far as I'm concerned - especially the mornings after I have night class and I don't even get to hit the rack until past 11.

Now for the self-effacing, baring one's innermost foibles news. This morning's exercise involved running a timed mile. The idea is not to be too concerned about what your time is. We get to do this all again at the end of the camp. The idea is to work towards improving your time.

The run was around Elm Park, which is one of these rather pretty urban parks with waterscaping and what-not, where everyone goes to let their dogs crap and pretend they didn't notice. The perimeter of the park is 8/10 of a mile, so the run adds a little extra at the end to make up the difference. One long length of the perimeter borders on one of Worcester's busiest streets, which even at that time of the morning has a surprising amount of traffic.

I admit, I was anxious about the run. I already knew there was no way I could make it without stopping to walk part-way. I even figured I'd be doing more walking than running. I was anxious enough that I was actually concerned about what I chose to wear this morning, not wanting to look utterly horrific panting along Park Avenue - I didn't want to be responsible for any accidents. A merely jiggling sweatball was the best I could hope for.

Craig will laugh at this moment, knowing that I was also wearing my green bandana around my head. He says it looks like Charlie Sheen in 'Hot Shots'.

After forcing us through a couple of shorter warm-up runs (which, in my opinion, sucked enough energy out of me to add two minutes to my mile time), we were off around the park. At least it's flat. I decided the best way to get through this without running completely out of steam was to devise a kind of strategy to occupy my brain and distract me from my lack of breath. I would go as far as I could at a good solid pace initially, until I really couldn't take another step, and then I would walk for a hundred steps. I'd then jog another hundred paces, then walk a hundred paces, and so forth until the end.

I think it was a good system for me this morning. By the time I got to the end of each hundred steps of running, I was nearly done. Counting all the steps in my head made me keep going until I got to 100. A hundred paces walking was the breather I needed to get my wind back to run some more. I ended the mile at a solid run, at about the same pace I started. Very tired.

11:49, Sargeant Erica says.

Not great...but better than I imagined. And although I felt totally drained, I realized afterwards that I could run it again tomorrow if I chose and already know how to shave some time off that. I could probably do it with 50 steps of walking for every 100 steps of running.

So what's the goal from here? I've got three weeks to improve my time. Three more weeks of boot camp, making me stronger and improving my conditioning. Can I get it under 11 minutes? I think that's more than doable, that's a must. Could I get it under 10? That's what I'd really like to shoot for. I don't know if I can, but I'm going to give it a shot.

posted by Maquinna @ 10:22 a.m.