The year in review Part 4

Yesterday was a measure of progress in my running during the current year.  Remember, I started my return to running in May after a two-year layoff due to an achilles strain and then more seriously, retina degeneration in my right eye requiring four eye surgeries, two of them emergency operations ("We need to operate today.  Who can you call right now to come pick you up afterwards?").

Fortunately I saved the sight in that eye, although it's diminished.  Once my eye healed from the last procedure in April, I started running again on a drastically reduced schedule, three times a week, starting off with a half mile at a time.  Because I am (or was) a certified running coach, I know that practically all novice (or returning) running plans falter due to running too far and too fast at the outset, thus crashing and burning, so I carefully adhered to a ridiculously low mileage and slow pace blueprint the first few months, even though I couldn't even run two blocks the first day, having to stop and walk it in heaving and gasping, a pathetic performance.

Four months later, on August 27th, I felt the need to gauge my progress by running a measured mile in my neighborhood as fast as I was able to.  I was disappointed to break a ten-minute mile the wrong way with a time of 10:13, but it was an honest effort and indicated some sort of progress.

Yesterday, four months after the last timed-mile run, I repeated the test over the same course.  I was pleased to be under ten minutes this time with a 9:26, an improvement in 120 days of 37 seconds, or about 9 seconds faster per 440 yards (141.5 or 2:22 quarters--slow!),  even though I do no speed work and I have cut back my mileage considerably each week as a gesture to my age being closer to seventy than sixty now, but I was incredibly fagged at the end of the mile.  Still, it is a sign of progress, with room for continuing improvement.