Running Goal - 11 of 40

Last Monday, I reached another goal for my 40 for 40 challenge. I'm feeling the pressure on getting everything done this year. I still have time and haven't written about a few of them yet, but time is ticking...

Anyway, this particular challenge/goal I set for myself was in relation to my "speed" in running. I'm quite content to run at a steady trot for a long time without pushing myself on pace. It's uncomfortable to push my pace. So I set a goal to run one mile in under 7:00 before I turn 40. When I set that goal, a 9:00 minute mile felt brisk, but I figured I could probably gasp out an 8:30 if I had to. Thankfully my adventure buddy Jamie was up to help me reach this goal and train with me. We enlisted the help of my favorite coach - Aaron. 

He made up an 8 week program for us to have a hard workout once a week in the midst of our steady trotting and a weekly long run. Every week we progressed a little farther and a little faster. It was tough. But we did it. Halfway through the program, we did a mile timing to see how we were doing. We ran a 7:27. Still a long way to go, but faster than we were originally. We went through another three weeks of steady progress before our final time trial on week 8. I was pretty nervous about attempting it since I knew it wouldn't feel good. I was confident that Jamie would break 7:00 as she's awfully speedy, but I wasn't sure if I could keep up with her. 

We warmed up on the track and got ready to go. We had our pace set up to knowing what we had to run every 100m. That helped us immensely. We were pretty right on track most 100m. We had a couple of 100s that were a touch slow, so we sped up the next ones. With 200m to go, we knew it was going to be close. We pushed ourselves to get those last few seconds and finished with a time of 6:59.57! We did it!!
Coach Aaron worked our legs off this morning. We were trying to decide what our next goal should be and decided that we should try to improve our normal trotting speed to something a little more respectable than a trot. So Aaron set us up this morning to turn our legs to jelly. Mission complete. 

Since we're on the subject of running, below are a few pictures of some of my favorite runners from a road race a few weeks ago. Here are Abby and two friends made up the "pink pack" that dominated the girls 1 mile run. They came in 1-2-3. They are looking at results here.
Ana nearing the finish line here. 
This is David as he crossed the finish line. This picture made the front page of our little local newspaper. He was having fun. I think he prefers running without the pressure to perform. He had a good time in all aspects. 
Do any of you have any fitness goals going right now? I like hearing about them! Drop me a comment and let me know!

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