Strange things can occur on the long run. This past Sunday, I had something of a time altering experience in which I am driven to write about this small happening rather than finishing up the post that I have dedicated to 6 weeks of my training.
Since Running is not everyone’s special interest, I am going to toss up the Visual now and include a couple of definitions. Hopefully, you non-runners who have made it this far won’t fall asleep.
I was supposed to only run 18 miles during this run, but I miscalculated when I should have turned around, I ran a BONUS 0.75 miles. I am really only looking at the run up to the 18 mile point. The table shows each mile split (i.e. when I hit my stopwatch – tried to do it at mile intervals), how fast I ran each one of those splits, and how much time it took me overall.
The first 9 miles took me 85 minutes to run (Yellow Square)… that’s 1 hour 25 minutes. That means, on average for the first 9 miles, it took me 9 minutes and 26 seconds to run a mile.
But something happened around mile 11, and something in a good way. The second 9 miles took me 78.38 minutes (Green Square)… that’s 1 hour 18 minutes and 23 seconds. An average mile in 8 minutes 43 seconds. In the industry, that’s called a Negative Split. And it’s a sizeable one too!
You might say it could be the course, but the course I ran was pretty much out-and-back, meaning that I was running across the same terrain. The first half was about as hilly/flat as the second half.
This run was 5 weeks out from the Chickamauga Marathon, but it suggests that were I able to keep my performance up for another 8 miles that I could finish in under 4 hours (my highest goal for the marathon distance). Who knows what it really means when it comes to Race Day (November 10th 2012), but it bodes well.
You non-runners can wake up now…
PLANET3RRY 