Vroom.

Man, woke up at 6:15 as usual for a Monday Wednesday or Friday and was still feeling the effects of the cold from the last couple days, it's been sort of a mini version of one that's been going around, but annoying nonetheless. Given the 39 degree outside temperature, decided to go ahead and sleep in and try my luck later on with regards to being able to get a run in and not die of hypothermia. Was a much more livable 60 around 11 when I finally got off my butt, so I went ahead and headed over to the track. It's much more comfortable running on the all weather track than on pavement, and I think it's doing wonders for preventing shin splints. Unfortunately the ROTC group prevents me from doing it in the early morning, so going to have to find a way around that next quarter. Maybe get up even earlier, maybe switch things around in the morning so that I go to class first. Just annoying to have to take 2 or 3 showers a day, that's why taking off to workout right when you wakeup works best.

Anyway, so I decided to go ahead and do another 2 mile time trial like the one I did last Saturday, in which I posted a pretty good time almost identical pacing wise to my fastest 2 mile of the last several years which I ran last July before shin splints put me under. It was still a bit slower though, but I knew with a few more training days it wouldn't be too difficult to surpass it. What I DIDN'T expect, was to haul ass as fast as I did this morning. My opening mile was a blazing (for me anyway) 7:37, which is the fastest mile I've run in quite some time, even though I wasn't even going full speed due to the expectations of having to run another without stopping. At the 1.5 mile mark I was at 11:51. This is also awesome because the requirements for OTS in the 1.5 mile event is 12:00, and that's the first time I've run under it. Yet again though, I could have gone faster if I didn't know I had another half mile to go. During laps 6 and 7 I was really feeling the effects of going out so fast, and my lap times started increasing, but my slow lap on the day was still only a 2:09, compared with a 2:20 or even 2:25 from previous trials. I then managed to turn in the fastest finishing lap I've run since I started training about a year ago. All this put together put me at a 2 mile time of 15:49. Nothing incredibly amazing given my times in the 11's and 12's in High School, but very impressive when comparing with more recent times. I cut over a minute off my PR when not including High School, which most runners know is a gigantic difference. Especially in a four day period. As I was running and turned in that incredible opening mile my goal became to break 16:00, when at the start of the run it was to break 16:30, even with the quicker goal I still made it easily.

For almost three weeks of more serious training, I've managed huge gains in speed. My initial 2 mile time was 18:34, although I definitely wasn't trying for any kind of speed in order to avoid injury. Two days later, 18:10, then two more, 17:54. Couple runs last week outside the track on the beach and so forth more for distance and longevity rather than speed, then Saturday a 16:55, followed with another distance run on Monday, then today's 15:49. It's going to become much more difficult to quicken my times however. Going to be focusing more on the in between runs, going a bit further on the distance runs, trying to get my legs further into the "used to running" shape they need to be in. One goal is to eventually get to training 5 days a week instead of 3, which will really help and allow me to work in some speed workouts along with the distance training. To put that much strain on my legs is going to require at least another month or two of what I've been doing though, until I don't feel the slightest hint of soreness anywhere near my shins or any other part of my lower leg associated with constant pounding. I don't feel ready yet, but I've got plenty of time.

I remember typing in this last summer that my intermediate goal was of course to break what was the requirement at that time when they were still running the 2 mile at OTS, which was 16:30, with my primary goal being to get to 15 minutes. I thought I was a loooooong way off from that. I probably still am, cutting another minute off will be much harder the second time around, especially after how dead I felt after today's. The most optimistic aspect of the whole process is these are times I'm running while alone on the track, never having anyone of the same pace to drag me along, so to speak. When being chased down or passed by hundreds of fellow trainees, with instructors yelling "encouragement" from the side of the track, something tells me the motivation to run even faster will be quite apparent.

Yeah, I thnk that's enough babbling about running today. Looking forward to Friday's weigh in, might see something in the 180s after two weeks ago I was at 190 flat. I've hovered right around there for a while, think it's about time I get into the 180s for good. I forget the conversion, it's something like you should run a mile 5 seconds faster for every pound you lose? Or something like that.