The Standing Mile

I made my way to the Foothills track this morning to check my watch footpod calibration. The ground staff put out those annoying barriers which block the first 2 lanes, making the turn in to each corner wide. After 5 laps, my watch said 100 metres over, so I told it I'd done 2,050. I still couldn't conculsively say the Stampede 5k was long or accurately measured, though I suspect it's still long. I'll leave my PB where it is, and perhaps I can aim for the "5k split" - 19:13 - next 5k race I do (most likely next year).

Having seen Roger Bannister on TV watching the Olympic flame, I thought I'd give myself a time trial over the standing mile as my training schedule for the rest of the year doesn't start for another 10 days.

The likes of me don't do track races - the shortest is 5k. There's a 3k fun run here and there in the autumn in Calgary I believe, so I might do one of those out of curiosity. Anyone else get curious about things like this? When I was 3, I dismantled a shop window shoe display because I was curious to see how it would collapse. Fast forward a few decades to an era where people wear less orange and purple, I wanted to see how I would make myself collapse doing a standing mile. Sort of. Anyhow, here began a self-timed time trial. I even found myself feeling a little pumped up, similar to the startline at a race.  

I was sharing the track with a few college athletes doing their warm-ups. A few odd looks from them, that and the barriers makes me prefer the Glenmore track where last week's Stampede race finished.

The first lap (of 4+ 9 metres - there's a line just before the start line that marks this) was done in just under 1:20, though I doubted I could substain this. I tried to concentrate on technique/ form, but pure speed-induced fatigue simply blurs the thinking. Endurance induced fatigue is different for me - with a little determination, it's possible to talk myself into doing it more or less right. As a last resort I'll even say "initiating manual override!" or something else perfectly reasonable.

My 1k split was 3:17.40, which I'll call a PB until I get round to doing a standing kilometre test. I'd like to think I dipped at the line, but it was more like a diagonal nod/ drunken Bollywood head tilt accompanied by a noise best spellt as "haruthooorh". My time was 5:45.78, just over 50% slower than the world record as my other PBs are.

So now I know. Next Sunday (22nd) my wife and I are going to do the Mud Hero obstacle race. Can't wait for that! It will also mark the end of my post-marathon period and start of training for the Harvest Half Marathon in September and California International Marathon (in Sacramento) in December. As one of my favourite lines goes, "running is awesome!"