Four year record in danger

Date	Place of exercise	Duration (minutes)	123 steps(s)	400 meters(s)	Start time
6 June	Orlyonok-Орлёнок	43	27.37	1:16.03	07:32

          A real accomplishment today. Elena and I ran to the gate area as usual, but today was a wondrous day—no rain, blue sky, birds filling the sky with song.

          In addition to the wonderful atmosphere, I sampled a modern track on the area of the camp. It was a truly modern track with an asphalt-like surface and with numbers and lines painted to indicate where runners should begin for each leg of the various events—400 meter run, 4x100, 4x200, etc. I was feeling fabulous, so I told Elena I was going to run one lap around the track—a quarter mile, 400 meters. This is the distance I ran four years ago in Emmetsburg, on their beautiful track. My goal at the time was 75 seconds, 1 minute and 15 seconds, 1:15.  I ended my time in Emmetsburg not coming any closer than 3 seconds from my goal.

          Today, on my first try, I made it only one second and 3 one-hundredths of second slower than 75 seconds. It makes me think that track is somehow a bit shorter than the Emmetsburg track. Another idea may be that this track is truly modern, while the E-burg track might be simply old tires: I heard a TED talk the other day that the runners of today may not actually be running faster than runners of years ago, but the surfaces they are running on, and the equipment may be better. 

          Whatever the case, I am super satisfied and quite thrilled to be running again at full speed with no pain. It’s been nearly a year since I could say that.