A improbable surprising feat.

My Chicago marathon-training program officially kicked into gear last night at 6:30pm.
There were some familiar faces in the group, but it was also refreshing to see some new faces I’ve seen on the roads. I look forward to getting to know them. One in particular was my arch rival in many races this year. We’d never met, but he would consistently beat me by a minute, a few dozen seconds etc in different races around town. I’d never met the guy, but his name caught my eye and then I started noticing him here and there: Chad Jones. I don’t particularly have any type of grudge against him; I’m just saying it was a friendly rivalry for me when I got home to see how he did, and how I did.

So fast-forward to last night.
Our welcome gift to the program was a 2 mile time trial. My thought: "Great! I’ve been injured for a month, barely getting back in to it. My heart/conditioning isn’t where it needs to be. My chest burns when I run hard for over 600 meters (1 lap and a half), and now they want me to run 8 laps around a track and make the time be worth a shit? Great! Just Great!"

You see, I like the 2-mile time trial. I really do. Running around a track, checking your splits at the 200-meter lines, running till you essentially want to stop, lie down and die. That’s actually fun to do once in a while. At least that’s what I think.

So here I go. My previous record… 12min 32 seconds back in September, and the start of the Austin Marathon Training. I REALLY wanted to break 12mins on my next attempt so I decided to just go for that and see where I blow up, limit the losses, and maybe squeak in under 13 and a1/2?

12mins would entail 45 second split at the 200-meter mark. I took off way fast, coming in at 40seconds for the first 200. Doesn’t sound like abig deal, but 16 sets of 200 meters is what I was in for, and 5 times 16 = 1min20seconds, which in turn is a 10min40 2 mile time trial.

I openly voiced my concern to the people around me I didn’t know. (Two guys, which I later found out were: Chad Jones and this other guy Billy.)
“ WOW, way too fast for me, go ahead guys, have un without me.”
They surprisignly followed suit and slowed themselves down to my pace. A welcome site, and it help to have rabbits.

At some point around maybe lap 4, Billy dropped off. Chad then dropped off at around Lap 6. - Not that this was a competitive race against them. In a 2mile time trial, you hope to have people to pull you along, but all in all, your time splits are the only things you focus on. - At least that's what I do.

I ran the first mile in 6min3seconds. I kept going as hard as I could, and reached a point of near breakdown by lap 6 of 8. I didn’t let up. I just kept going. “Always Be Closing” I repeated to myself. I know, it makes no sense, but I needed something to keep me going, and in this case, I was closing on each 200-meter split.

Long story short, I ran 45, 46, 47, 46, 45 second 200s etc. (I can’t pull my splits, because I failed to clear my memory on my watch before hand.)
I came around the 4th corner of the last lap, looked down on my watch and saw 11:54. The dream goal was gone, but I had 100 meters to get a new personal record. I ran the last 100 meters in 18 seconds giving it every…inch…of…energy…i…could..pull..out and finished in 6min 13 seconds.
A new PR! More importantly a surprisingly and quite improbable PR. 19 seconds faster than last September!

I can’t wait to do another time trial in 2 months to break the 12min barrier. I know I have it in me. There’s no doubt now!

P.S. This also makes the upcoming Congress Avenue Mile a very interesting race for me. Can I run 1:15s for 4 laps to get in under 5minutes? I mean, I ran 8 laps at around 1:30-1:33s so lets hope so!

Final Result: 12mins 13 seconds
Mile 1: 6min 3 seconds
Mile 2: 6min 10 seconds

According to McMillan's Running Calculator, that translates to a 3hour 13min 21 second marathon. Hmmm...