When I found out my son was running a mile on Fridays in Gym at school, and was finishing it in around 14 minutes, I was not happy with him. That's 4 miles per hour and I practically walk that fast, so there's no way my 10-year old son was running a 14-minute mile unless he was walking most of it, too.
My local park has a walking track around it, and using Google Maps I measured it to be approx. 1/3 mile around, so I headed out and ran three laps, finishing in approx. 9 minutes. The next night I went out with the boy and together we ran the mile in a little over 10 minutes.
"I never knew I could run that fast!" he exclaimed, excitedly.
That Friday while running his mile he slipped over rounding the baseball diamond and skinned his knee on the gravel. Apparently he finished his mile in 10:30 with blood running down his leg. I was pretty proud of him when I heard this, although he was mad at himself because recovering from the spill slowed him down so he didn't break 10 minutes (his goal). Hearing that made me even more proud of him :)
Over this Christmas break the boy has been taking it easy but when I discovered the track at my local High School is open to the public after 6pm I took him out to run an accurate mile. Not having had much exercise in 2 weeks other than a class or two of Tae Kwon Do I practically had to drag him across the line. Time? A shade under 11 minutes.
Knowing I could run it faster, and having jumped at the chance to take part in a 10K Mud Run with 4 coworkers this June, with the boy spending this New Year's Eve with his grandparents I headed out to see what I could do without a 10-year old anchor holding me back.
Bravely (or foolishly, depending on your point of view) I decided to see if I had it in me to run TWO miles.
I did.
Mile 1 = 2:15 + 2:26 + 2:28 + 2:29 = 9:38
Discounting that first faster lap I was surprised to see how consistently I ran the 2nd, 3rd & 4th laps. But then Mile 2 happened.
Mile 2 = 2:29 + 2:29 + 2:29 = WOW!
And yes, I know I'm missing a 4th (or 8th) Lap there. Unfortunately I was using my cell phone's Stopwatch App to time myself, and I hit "Stop" when I finished rather than "Lap", which resulted in my final Lap time not being recorded. And when I hit Stop all I saw was that the first couple of digits was a 1 and a 9, i.e., 19 minutes-something, and as I was pretty happy to run two miles in less than 20 minutes (my goal) I never looked at the seconds.
I am pretty sure I ran that final lap a little faster than 2:29 though. I definitely stepped up my pace during the last 100 meters. Not quite to a full sprint but definitely faster than the 6mph jog I'd been maintaining for the past 20 minutes. I might have done that final lap in 2:25 ;)
All up I was pretty happy with myself. But if I'm going to do a 10K Mud Run in 6 months time I need to be able to run more than 2 miles. I need to be able to run 7 miles in less than 2 hours, but that's 7 miles of running through mud, climbing over walls, crossing streams, & crawling through tunnels. In other words, I need to step my shit up, fo'shizzle!
Or something like that :P
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I've never done or heard of a mud run. But I did play in a mud volleyball tournament one time. That was some fun.
My running frequency always goes into a sharp decline in the winter.
My coworkers have vetoed the Camp Pendleton Mud Run due to prior appointments (yes, that far in advance) but we're keeping our eyes on a couple of other runs, specifically the Warrior Dash, and the Gladiator Rock n Run. At approx. 3 miles they're both considerably shorter than Camp P's 7-mile/10K run but they apparently come with a lot more obstacles, i.e, a lot more fun...hopefully :)
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