8 miles at 7:42!

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            I shattered my goal.  My training program called for 8 ‘hard’ miles today.  I decided that since I run easily at an 8-minute pace, I would try 7:45, then I decided that might be a bit tough, so I lowered my expectations to 7:50.  All of you ‘arm chair’ marathoners out there may be thinking that 15 seconds per mile is not big deal.  In fact, if a person figured out the total time savings, the sum is paltry. 

If I were to run 8 miles at an 8-minute pace, that would be 64 minutes, of course.  8 miles at 7:45/mile is 62 minutes.  I know, hardly worth mentioning.  But while I can comfortably maintain an 8-minute pace for 13 miles, 7:45 kicks my butt.  I don’t know about other people, but from MY point of view, 15 seconds is like the difference between biking downhill with a tailwind and biking uphill with the wind in my face and a kid behind on a trail-a-bike. 

            I started running on the beach with 7:50/mile in my mind.  After .5 mile I was at a 7:40 pace, and after 1 mile, I was at 7:45.  I thought, “Hmm, maybe 7:45 is not out of reach.”  Then I got into some deep sand.  To compensate for the distance I was slipping each stride, and the extra effort I needed to climb out of each whole, I pushed myself—resulting in a quicker pace by 5 seconds.  (5 seconds!  In 8 minutes there are 96 blocks of 5 seconds.  That means 5 seconds is a 1% improvement!  Peanuts to the lay observer.)  The rest of the run, I achieved either 2 seconds more or 2 seconds less than the mile before.  This tells me that my comments in my radio commentary about running at the same pace until I die, are quite accurate.  (August 20) Plus or minus 2 seconds, that is, until the last mile when I ran 8 seconds faster than the previous mile—a whopping 1.7% improvement.

            I finished my run just in front of a woman feeding seagulls.  She asked me why I was torturing myself.  I had come up grunting, staining my neck, and gasping for air.  I couldn’t come up with anything quickly—when you don’t know that language so well, all of your statements take on the air of textbook speech as you try not to leave anything to chance.  Add to this difficulty the fact that I felt like I was being sucked down in the Marianas trench with no air.  I could have said, Я трейнирую за Московский Марафон. (I’m training for the Moscow Marathon.) But there is a 90 % chance she wouldn’t have understood my accent and my words.  What I would have wanted to say is Я тренеруюсь для Московский Марафон (I am training for the Moscow Marathon)—and to be 100% grammatically correct, I would have said, Я трегеруюсь для участия в Московском Марафоне (I’m training to participate in the Moscow Marathon).  In addition, there is a 95% change she’s never heard of the Moscow Marathon. (I’ve read some reviews by people who say that there is not many spectators.  One person said there are more cops blocking the traffic on the streets than runners.)  What I DID say was a mumbled, Бегал 12 километер  (I ran 12 kilometers—this after doing some quick figuring in my head.  8 x 1.6=12.8)

            If I ran at this pace for the whole marathon (impossible), I would have a time of 26.22 x 7.7 = 201.894  / 60 = 3.365  or  3 hours and 22 minutes.

8 miles 28 August

1	07:45
2	07:41
3	07:43
4	07:41
5	07:43
6	07:42
7	07:44
8	07:37
		07:42