Today, I ran twice as slow as the world’s fastest mile!

I started exercising again after a 10 year pause, and decided to create a goal, thinking it would be help keep me motivated. I wanted to keep it simple and practical and wanted it to have something to do with running a mile around the Midtown YWCA indoor track.

Running a “Four-Minute-Mile” sounded cool, but that’s something I know I’ll ever do. That’s what elite runners do, and I don’t want to be an elite runner. Maybe a Five-Minute-Mile? Ugh.

Then I had it. What if I double the time of the world’s record for running one mile? I’ll work to run twice as slow as the world’s fastest mile!

Wikipedia.org has a page “Mile run world record progression” and states that the men’s world record for running one mile is:

3 minutes, 43 seconds, 13 one-hundredth seconds
By Hicham El Guerrouj, from Morocco
7 July 1999

So, two times that is:

7 minutes, 26 seconds, 26 one-hundredth seconds

It’s taken me about 4 months, but today I ran one mile in:

7 minutes, 23 seconds, 10 one-hundredth seconds

This is good. I’m stoked! Feels awesome to be twice as slow.

So, what now? Well, I’ll need to work on consistency, I’m sure. But now I will plan to run twice as slow as the world’s fastest 2 Mile run, achieved by Daniel Komen, who ran 2 miles in 7:58.61.

That means I’ll be working toward a 2 Mile time of 15:57.22. Sounds good to me.