An Almost Consistent Mile

If you recall my post last week I had a little (ok tons of) trouble running consistent quarter mile splits for the mile I ran. I found the article I was looking for on how to train yourself to run consistent laps for a mile. On the schedule for tonight was another mile "fast" (it's only fast compared to my other runs). So I figured it would be a good time to try some of the things that Jeff Galloway suggested in that article. As opposed to just going off memory like last time I figured out what I wanted to run my mile in and how that broke down to 400 and 200 splits. I decided to go for a 6:25, about 10 seconds faster than last week, so that meant 400 splits in 1:36 and 200s in 48 seconds.

We jogged the half mile to the track as a warm up, I jogged another lap, did some stretching, ran some strides, then it was off to the races. I didn't go out like a race horse tonight, but I did go out a little fast. I was pretty consistent the next few 200s then picked it up a little last one. Here are my splits, total time and average heart rate for each 200.



So my average time for each 200 was 47.41, each 400 was 1:34.81 and average HR was 173. I was a lot more consistent than last week, but I still have a ways to go until all my splits are within a second or two of each other. My time was 16 seconds faster than last week but I'm pretty sure that was because I ran at a more consistent pace not because I've improved that much in less than a week. Still tonight's run makes me pretty confident I'll reach my goal of 13 minutes for the 3k Saturday.

I struggled through the run a lot more than I was expecting to though (ok, expecting isn't the right word, more like hoping). I'm going out on a limb and saying the reason I struggled was because I didn't go to sleep until about 4:30 this morning and went into work at 8. I skipped breakfast like usual, and had a few cups of coffee once I got to work. Then I didn't eat anything for lunch (again, like usual) had a few handfuls of pretzels at work and a little 6oz. thing of yogurt when I got home. Then I went and ran a mile fast and didn't expect to struggle with it?