run an 8 minute mile

I have a tentative date with a running buddy to work on miles outside. I usually run on the treadmill, but recently I’ve been finding it boring and even more difficult than it should be. (I rarely run better than a 10 minute mile on the treadmill, although I know I can easily do a 9 minute.) Besides, the weather’s so nice lately, the only thing keeping me back from going outside is feeling awkward about exercising in public. We plan to run mornings before our 8 AM class a few days a week, at our school’s track. One of the advantages to this is that I know a few good 3-mile routes from the high school, as compared to me running alone in my neighborhood which would involve running the same boring mile 3 times (I’m not really allowed to leave the neighborhood on foot, as my parents don’t want me running on a major road.)

Had to run a mile in gym today, I got a 9:08. Not bad, considering how lax I’ve been about running lately. I know I should be pushing for a better time, but I’m kinda stuck on being proud of how much I’ve improved over the past year, fitness-wise. (Completely inflexible to being able to touch my toes easily; not being able to run a half mile to, at one point, running 3 in like, 28.5 minutes; being embarrassingly stereotypical in that I could do about 10 pushups to being able to do 30 now.)
Surprisingly, I didn’t mind running outside that much. Usually I run on a treadmill, but maybe I should switch when the weather’s nice.

I got 7:10 for my maintenance “mile” this morning, which would be an 8:20 ish real mile. HELLZ YEAH. 1:15 off my previous time in exactly a week is fantastic, especially by my standards. I have high hopes of accomplishing this goal before the end of the month. :p
As soon as my expected mile time dips below 8:00 I’m going to have to find a time when I’m fresh to do a full mile and finish this goal off.

Had a maintenance mile (after the 5 mile workout) and I did 8:25. That’s about 5 seconds off in 2 weeks, which is good but not great.

At practice today we did a maintenance mile. (If you’re not familiar with them, maintenance miles are done after you’ve done a whole workout, to test how well you can run in a meet-like situation, where you don’t have the energy you do at the start. In my case I had done 3.75 miles already.) I did mine in 8.5 minutes, but our “mile” track isn’t a whole mile, so at the same pace I’d do a mile in 9.8 minutes. It’s a good improvement on the first one I did, and since I was already exhausted I’m confident I could do a fresh mile in 9.2-9.5 minutes. :D I might even break 9 minutes per mile before my first meet.
Unfortunately, in comparison to the rest of the team, newbie me is slow like a turtle…

We had a timed run during practice this morning. I did 1.5 miles in 15 minutes, so it turns out to a mile in 10. It’s better than before, but still not great.

The coaches timed us at our last practice, and I did 0.86 miles (because for some reason we didn’t have a full mile available) in just under 9 minutes. Assuming I kept that pace for the next 0.14 mile, I’d do a mile in 10.5 minutes. However, it was the second “mile” of the day, so I was tired…yeah, I’m making an excuse. Still, at least I know where I’m starting from.