Pushing Myself

Distance: 3.5 miles
Duration: 33:50
Avg Pace: 9:40 min/mile!!!!!
Route: MapMyRun

Usually when I run, I aim to do a little better than the last run. Defining "a little better" then depends on what my next race is. In the past few months, I've been training to run a 12K (Bay2Breakers), so each run has been about an 11 minute/mile pace but I tried increasing the distances a little more and a little more.

Since B2B has gone and passed, I didn't have much of an aim or goal -- my next race was the next weekend and was the Warrior Dash, which was an obstacle course more than a run... and the next race after that was the 5K in October for the AIDS Walk (have you donated yet? seriously? Send $5 to my page and feel $100 better about yourself! Click here!)

So the past two runs, I decided to push myself a little. I had been running for a while now, content at my heart rate and pace. When I decided to push myself a little, I found a huge improvement. I've always said that one of my goals is to run a 5K in under 30 minutes. I'm pretty sure I can do that now.

And so that I won't get "bored" or just be content with my current norm of running about 3.5 miles, I signed up for an 8K on July 2. (For those that are K-challenged, that's 4.9 miles. Essentially, it's a 5 mile race). So I'll be going back to building up some more miles in the next few weeks.

For now, I'm declaring myself a Ten-Minute-Mile-Runner (no longer an Eleven-Minute-Mile-Runner)!