Clay Moyle and son Caleb
Does a 7-minute mile sound awfully slow to you?
It sure does to me.
I’m working with three young girls on their basketball skills on a weekly basis and one of them also runs on her schools track team as an 8th grader. I recently learned that she’d run the mile in a time of 5:53, which was a second off the girl’s record for her school.
I shared that information with my longtime friend and former teammate Dave Campbell. When Dave and I were 8th graders our P.E. teacher, Dean Scherer, gave an automatic “A” to anyone in the class who could complete the mile in less than 6 minutes.
Dave was one of the few in the class who accomplished the feat, as I recall. In fact, he believes he did it in about 5 1/2 minutes at the time. I don’t remember what my own time was now, but I know I didn’t run it under 6 minutes.
So, the two of us got to talking about running a mile and wondering just how fast, or slow as the case may be, we’d actually run one now at age 56.
Right before I had my first hip replacement at age 48, I remember I was curious as to how long it would take me to run a 440 so I went to a local track on a whim and gave it a whirl.
On that particular day I remember heading into the first turn and thinking that my arthritic hips hurt like hell and the one on the left didn’t feel that stable. I wondered if one of my wheels might fall off at any moment. But, I wasn’t going to try it a second time, so I pushed through and gave it my best effort.
Of course, I hadn’t trained for it and I didn’t have much of a kick left in me as I came down the backstretch. I was somewhat disappointed to learn that I’d completed the lap in a time of 1:09.
Well, I remember thinking to myself, I guess I’ve regressed to the level that I’d reached when I was about 11 years old, since I recalled achieving a time of 1:11 as a fifth grader.
But, this is about running the mile.
Dave has been recovering from a strained calf muscle, so he really hasn’t been able to do much in the way of any serious training for a while. He went out for a run recently and figured he’d probably run it in a 9-minute mile pace. He questioned whether we’d be able to even run a mile under 8 minutes.
Eight minutes? Surely we could easily run one under 8 minutes, couldn’t we? Were we really that far gone that we would have difficulty running a mile under 8 minutes, I wondered.
No, I wouldn’t have any problem doing that myself, I thought. After all, I’m playing full court basketball with the guys every Saturday morning and putting in at least 30 minutes at a time on an elliptical trainer or stair-climber another five days per week.
Is it really possible I couldn’t even run four laps in a row less than two minutes each?
I was convinced there was no way I couldn’t do a lot better than an 8-minute mile. In fact, there was a part of me that wondered if I wouldn’t really be able to run a 6-minute mile if I really pushed myself.
I tend to overestimate my capabilities to push it and achieve physical goals a lot these days.
In fact, that’s one of the things my friend and I concluded has really changed the most for us somewhere along the line as we’ve reached our current age. We have a diminished ability to draw upon any reserves and push ourselves to achieve a goal.
Yes, these days it seems as though we not only run out of gas much earlier than we anticipated, but once the needle approaches empty there really isn’t much of anything left in our tanks.
My curiosity got the better of me and I ventured over to the local junior high track early one morning a week ago to see just how long it would take me to run a mile. I figured I’d try and run at a pace that I thought would equal a time of 1:30 per lap and took a little timer with me so I could monitor my progress.
My wife had advised me to warm up beforehand, but all I did was a bit of stretching before taking off. It didn’t take long for my breath to become labored. In fact, I was already breathing hard before I’d completed the first lap.
As I continued through the second lap I wondered just when it was that it became so much work for me to run two laps in a row. When I finished that lap I took a quick glance at my timepiece and realized it had taken me 3 minutes and 22 seconds to complete a half-mile!
Are you kidding me?
In the space of a few seconds I calculated it was highly unlikely that I would be able to complete a mile under 7-minutes because I was tiring. The time on my final two laps were undoubtedly going to be slower than the first two and it was going to hurt to try and extend myself in those two additional laps.
So, I did what any rational 56-year-old would do in that situation.
I quit!
Then, I walked a lap and just for the heck of it did a third lap in a time of 1:40.
I figured that although it was clear to me I couldn’t even run a mile under 7 minutes I could probably do it under 8. But, since I’d quit I couldn’t say that for sure.
I shared a report of my lame effort with Dave and we exchanged a few more emails on the topic.
Ultimately, I decided that if we were really going to make an effort to see just how much we could improve our respective times running the mile that I should really get back out there and make a legitimate effort at running a mile so I could establish a benchmark for myself.
So, a few days later, I came home from work and threw on my running gear and headed for a track that I knew wouldn’t be very populated. The fewer witnesses on-hand, the better I thought. Upon my arrival, I was pleased to learn I had the track all to myself.
I slowly jogged about a 100 yards, returned to the starting line, set my timer and told myself to suck it up and it would be over before I knew it, or hopefully less than 8 minutes later.
The first two laps were pretty much a repeat of my previous effort, in fact three seconds slower as I reached the half-mile mark in a time of 3 minutes and 25 seconds. I was breathing hard, my lungs were hurting and my legs were gaining weight with each succeeding stride.
But, there would be no quitting this time. I was going to find out how long it really took me to run the mile now regardless of how pitiful my time might be.
I focused on the third lap and the idea of trying to maintain a pace similar to that which I’d already run. If I couldn’t do that I was determined to do my best to minimize the deterioration of that pace. Once I completed that lap I knew I was almost home free.
As I began that final lap I told myself to suck it up and that it would all be over soon. I knew my pace was slowing but I did my best to push through. There was no thought of making any big effort to sprint the final portion of that final lap, as I knew I was close to running on fumes and the best-case scenario was to avoid blowing a lung out and just finishing at a decent pace.
I checked the timer as I crossed the finish line and discovered I’d completed the mile in a time of 7 minutes and 10 seconds.
Now, that time would have sounded absolutely pathetic to me only a week earlier, but at that point I was actually pleased with it because I’d begun to wonder if I really even could better 8 minutes.
It was a pretty humbling and eye opening experience. I now realize that just as doing a little running on a treadmill or a local track doesn’t really help put one in shape for all the short sprints required when playing basketball, playing basketball once/week and doing some light cardio work apparently doesn’t prepare one for running the mile either. Or, at least it doesn’t when you’re 56-years-old.
There was a time when I could get away with doing things like this, testing myself physically in some manner without really training as hard as I should in advance for a particular activity. Instead, I could always just call upon some reserves and still put in a decent performance. Those days are apparently long gone. There are no reserves anymore.
When I reported my mile time to Dave he told me he thought that meant there was a good chance I could get my mile time down to the 6-minute level with 4-6 weeks of training to do so.
Frankly, based on how much effort I expended to run at a pace of 1 minute and 47-and-a-half seconds per lap I have a very hard time imagining how on earth I could lop off as much as 15-20 seconds in time per lap in such a short period of time, if ever.
I hate to think how much it would hurt to train to try and accomplish that. So, I’m current debating whether or not I actually want to try it or if I should just be content to try and break the 7-minute-mile sound barrier and call it a day.
My conclusion is it’s all down hill from here on out.