Saturday, September 22, 2007

Two mile timed run

One of the conditions of earning a black belt is to run 2 miles in under 16 minutes. I thought this would be easy but when I did my first timed run on a brutally hot day after an hour of sparring and having received many body shots, I clocked in at 16:19. I was over by 19 seconds!!!

So I started running and training with some intensity. One week later, on a cool evening, I clocked in at 15:40 :-> Hurrah, no more worries. Let the games begin.

So, I started chasing better times using as my target, Agnes. She was only about 25 seconds ahead of me.....

To make a long story short, my progress has been steady and dramatic. Last night, Sept 21, I did my personal best (again!) on the timed two mile run at 14:09!!! Yes, this is more than two minutes faster than when I started getting timed. I partially got there by deciding to stay next to Jennifer Melrose and then, near the end, seeing a chance to catch and pass young Steve Lavallee (the nephew, great guy).

But Agnes is still nearly 30 seconds ahead of me and her progress remains inexorable. She is fixated on trying to catch up with Kathy. Meanwhile, we are becoming one of the fastest running candidates classes in recent history since ahead of Kathy is some kids (12 years old) who as far as I can tell, is running in untied sneakers and going very fast.

I know that I'm going to beat 14 minutes before I'm done. What else?

I should mention that I'm strong in this one area. For many, maybe most, the sixteen minute two mile run is a huge personal challenge. They struggle hard to get their time down to 16 minutes and for many, with leg and hip problems, it is their waterloo. For others, it's just too fast. I struggle with flexibility, recovery time from classes, pushups, kicks, and situps but all those years of soccer left me with real wheels. It's said that in a soccer game, we use to cover 8 miles and while I was never the quickest, I always built my endurance up to be a source of strength.

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