On running fast

(I originally wrote this over 1 week ago, but didn't have time to finish it.  In light of yesterday's column, I'm putting it in today.)

I think I used to run fairly fast.  I'm not sure how to define "fairly fast, though."  But it sure isn't what I do now.  And compared to how I ran in high school, at least for short distances, even when I was fairly fast, I was slow.  Let's think about this:

In high school 200 repeats in :28 were easy.  I remember doing a pre-race workout of  8 x 200's in :28 with jogs across the grass to recover and it was like a day off.  Now, I don't think I could run a :28 all out.  2:40 800 repeats were also fairly easy. 

When I was in college I remember running an 800 in 2:26.  I was working hard but this was during a workout.  Years later, I ran a 2:2x during a meet.  I also ran a 4:4x 1500 during that meet.  And somewhere in there were a few 5:02 miles.  I don't think I ever broke 5:00 in a mile though.

When I moved up in distance, I remember running a 16:30 5K during a duathlon, and several open 16:5x's.  Even as recently as 1998, I think, I ran a 17:00 5K at a race in Auburn.  My PR for a 10K was 34:30 at the Super Bowl 10K in Tucson in early 1993 (I think).  I remember running it in a brand new pair of racing flats, which I took out of the box that morning.  I also remember tripping over a traffic cone and falling about halfway through the run.  My PR for 8K/5 miles was set during the 1994 Army Ten-Miler when I went through in 27:30.  I finished the race in 56:40 and was 101st out of around 10,000 (couldn't crack the top 100!).  And my half-marathon PR is 1:20:xx.  All of those were set in 1993-1994.  And then I started running marathons...

I always said that I wouldn't run a marathon unless I could run 2:50.  I figured that anything slower than that was just a slog.  How naive I was!  When I ran my first marathon, I was in 2:50 shape.  I went through the first 18 miles at 2:50 pace and was comfortable.  Unfortunately, I then got tired.  Having never raced that far before, I faded badly, finishing in 3:05:59.  And it has been all downhill since then.

Today, I ran 2 x 1 mile at 6:47 and 6:41.  It's not fast, but I wasn't going all out, so I'm satisfied with how it went.  It's still a far cry from my past, but since it's February, I'm hoping that things will get better (faster) by and by.