Apparently You Can Go a Lot Faster Without Hills

I did manage to get in last night’s run on the track. Either both Google Maps and my car’s odometer have been grossly overestimating the length of the road routes I normally run, or I do much worse on the hills they include than I could have ever imagined.

The workout totaled 29 laps on the 400m track last night for a total of 11.6 kilometers, or about 7.2 miles. My time for that distance was 1:02:28 for an average pace per mile of 8:39. I know that doesn’t sound very impressive for most people, but for me that was absolutely flying. To put it in perspective, prior to last night the fastest run I’ve had since I started last October had an average pace per mile of exactly 9:00, and very few of my runs have approached that speed, either. Last night’s workout was 21 seconds per mile faster than that.

I know I got the distance for last night correct because I have 29 splits, one for each lap, in my watch, and the times for each are all about the same. There were times during the run that I looked down at my watch and thought, “Man, I really ought to slow down or else I’m going to fall apart soon,” but I never managed to do it, and apparently I didn’t need to, either, because I never did fall apart.

This is a fairly hilly area, and some of the hills that I run up regularly are doozies, but I never imagined that they could add that much time to the distance. Come to think of it, some of the fastest runs I had prior to last night were on the flat, mile-long boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach in June.