About a month or two ago, I had a 6th grade helper, E, in my Sunday School class (the sister of one of my 1st graders, S). We were at the part of class where the kids tell me interesting things that they've done during the week. S told me that his sister won 1st place in the 400 at a track meet. I asked her what her time was and she said that she ran a 1:09.
I wondered if I could run a 1:09 too. I used to run track, but I hadn't done any middle distance in a looooong time. Well, the following Monday, I went to the track to see how I would do. I figured if a 6th grade girl could run a 1:09, surely I could run something close to that.
WRONG!
I ran my lap and clocked in at a very unblistering 1:25. I was glad that E wasn't there racing against me because it would've been embarrassing. As it was, it probably just looked to everyone like I was doing a slow warm up lap. (Oh, by the way, E was very encouraging to me. I told her that I had run a 1:25 and she said 'That's not so bad! I have a friend who ran a 1:23!' I asked her what grade her friend was in, and she replied 'Fifth'. Great...)
I decided that I was going to start training to beat 1:09 so that I would no longer be slower than a 6th grade girl. I started doing interval training during the week instead of my normal slow jog. My workout was a mile and a half warmup followed by a couple of 400's and a couple of 300's (or 200's if I was too tired).
It didn't take long to see the results. Within a week, I was down to 1:13. The next week, it was down to 1:11. And finally...a 1:09!
I saw E at church and proudly told her that I had tied her time. She told me that that was really good! She also informed me that her other friend (also a 6th grader) ran a 1:07!
yay...
Ok, so now I had a new goal. But it wasn't so bad. I got my 1:07 just last Friday!
I think that I can now safely say that I am faster than all 6th grade girls in the entire world (doesn't count if their last name is Bolt, Lewis, Devers, or Joyner-Kersey).
Oh yeah, and that thing about the NEW World's Champion? Well, running my 400's has also helped speed up my one and a half mile warmup time. It used to take my a little over 12 minutes to run it. Today, I clocked in at 10:47! My own personal best! It seemed pretty fast, so I looked up what the Track and Field World's Record is for the mile and a half. Turns out there isn't any! There's records for the 1500, mile, 2000, and 3000. But no mile and a half. I must be the first, so I guess that makes me that Champ. I just need to figure out who to email my time to at the US Track & Field Association, so that they can update their World's Record page.
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