Today was a day of personal bests for me, and I couldn’t be more excited! I started the morning off as I always do; with push ups. Today, I decided to go up from the 45 I’ve been doing for the past few days by doing 50 push ups and I did it! It was hard and I had to push myself a little, but I got to 50 and stopped. Could I have done more? Probably, but not many more. I’ve been doing a good job of avoiding injury, so I didn’t push myself to a breaking point. Just to 50 and stopped.
Then came the run. I decided to stretch out the legs a little and start with a faster pace. I normally don’t like to do this, but I decided to stretch the pace by increasing the distance my legs kicked out, and I concentrated on the feeling in my feet as I pushed the ground away from me. It’s hard to explain, but I could actually feel the speed this time. I got into a comfortable run pace and held it steady for three miles, which is a huge win for me.
I didn’t look at my pace or splits during the run; I wanted to just give it what I thought I needed to give to get a decent time, and it worked. I was able to run 3.52 miles with a 9’26” pace! My two mile time was 18’08” (my goal was to do it under 19′) and my three mile time was 27’46” which for my age would be a passing (decent) run in the Marine Corps PFT. This is a benchmark for me. I wore my USMC dress blues this past weekend as I was within the height/weight regulations, and now I’m able to run within the USMC PT standards as well. If I had a pull up bar and someone to hold my feet, I could have done the pull ups and crunches to see what score I could get for my age. Maybe some weekend I’ll go to a park with Sherry and take a PFT to see how I do.
I am very happy this morning! My weight is still declining, my physical abilities are increasing, and I’m feeling great. I have a good burn in my legs today from pushing it out a little harder than normal, but none of the bad pain. And to think, I just started running on September 10th of this year, and already, I’m running sub-10 minute miles. Heck, I’m almost to running sub-9’s consistently!
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