I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on t.v. And I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express, last night. Even so, allow me to start by saying that portions of the workout described below aren't really suggested for normal training. Sometimes, we all go a little nuts, or have a strange desire to know some useless bit of information.
My workout on Saturday started out normal enough. I was in the pool as close to 6 a.m. (opening time) as possible. I wanted to complete as many yards as possible before getting thrown out so 10 members of the water aerobics class have room for their workout. They were running late, so I managed a 500 yard warmup followed by 14x100 at T-pace. By then, the ladies were chomping at the bit to move lane ropes.
I relocated to the track for about 90 minutes of running. A couple of runs during the week were perhaps a bit too strenuous, so I decided to do 10 miles at about 8:15 pace. That pace keeps me near the bottom of Zone 2. The run went very well. Too well, perhaps, because somewhere around mile 8 I started thinking about Wednesday's run, where I did a half-mile somewhere around the 4:30/mile pace. While I knew running a sub-5 minute mile was out of the question, I wondered just how FAR out of the question.
This is the part where you should refer back to the first paragraph and remind yourself that I sometimes do things that might be ill advised.
After finishing the 10 mile run, I took a break for a few minutes to even my heart rate out. I found one of my favorite "run fast" tunes, got a running start, and started timing. I had no idea what kind of pace I could maintain for one mile, so I started out what I assumed would be too fast. I guessed right, and know each lap was just a bit slower than the previous lap.
Some time ago, I said there was no way I could ever run 10K at a 5:30/mile pace. In fact, I was fairly confident there was no way I would ever move that fast without a machine, unless I was falling out of an airplane.
Apparently, I was wrong. One mile, 5:29. No gravity required.
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