I ran the Torrington Road Race yesterday and, to my surprise, did quite well. I managed to shave more than 30 seconds from my last year's pace (2006: 8:00; 2007: 7:28)! This wasn't at all a result of speed work, but purely my increase in mileage over the last two months. It felt great to run faster and to be able to maintain a faster pace for the duration of the race. I felt strong through the finish. I hope, someday, to be able to compete with some of my fellow bloggers.
Interesting statistic: Since beginning marathon training on the last Monday of June, none of my training runs have been faster than 9:30/mile (more than 3/4 of my training runs were slower than 10:00/mile).
Interesting question: When do we stop benefiting (in terms of speed) from more mileage and, in turn, stronger running muscles and start needing to integrate speed work into our training to get faster?
Prior to beginning marathon training, all of my "training" runs were between 8:00 and 9:00/mile, except for the small percentage that were faster than 8:00/mile. HOWEVER, I rarely broke 8:00/mile in races (5k and farther). And when I did, it was by only a few seconds.
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