I decided to run at the track this morning to see if I could do 3.25 miles with sub 8-minute miles. I had it all figured out that I needed to basically run each lap faster than 2 minutes. I didn’t account for the fact that the outside lane of the track is .025 longer than the inside lane. Doesn’t sound like much, but after four laps you’ve run 1.10 miles rather than 1 mile.

So I was running fast and hard and my first lap was 1.52 minutes. My second lap was 2.08 and I started to get discouraged (still thinking that I was running standard 1/4 mile laps). The third lap was 2.04 and the fourth lap was 2.04 also, for a total of 8.10 for four laps. I stopped after the fourth lap thinking that there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t break an 8 minute mile. As I left the track, I read about the lane lengths. I did some calculations as I ran home and figured that I actually ran faster than I thought: 7.36/mile. That’s a relief, since I was aiming at the high 7’s for the full three miles. I’ll go back on Saturday or Sunday and run the full length, which’ll be 3.3 miles if I do 12 laps on the outside lane. In order to break 8 minute miles, I’ll need to run each lap faster than 2.08 minutes. We’ll see how that goes…