8 Miles in Under an Hour

Juneathon day 9, Runstreak day 101…

This week was in danger of being a washout, by Friday I had notched up a pretty feeble 20 miles, then a late night on Friday and a warm, cosy bed on Saturday morning conspired against me and my plan for a morning 8 miler.

It’s funny how quickly your perspective can change – fortunately I found some time in the afternoon and thought I would try a bit of a fast effort. I had, in my mind, a target of 8 miles in under an hour. When I’d tried this a couple of months back, I was just outside the hour, averaging 7:35 per mile.

I set off at just under 7 minute miles, hoping to keep it up till the halfway point and then try and hold on as best I could on the way back – thinking I would slow, but I would give me plenty of leeway to still get sub 1 hour. By the halfway point I was a few of seconds ahead (6:56s) and took a short (20s) break to have a drink, then cracked on again – I could feel it burning now, my stride was shortening, so I tried to keep the cadence high.

There’s a bridge crossing at the 6.5 mile point, and a gate to go through, I took a few seconds there for another drink and pushed on, still making good time, but really blowing by this stage.

I hung on till the 8 mile point – it’s still another 0.2 miles back home but I was spent, so I stopped the clock there. I covered the 8.05 miles in 56:39, averaging 7:02 per mile, and knocking 33 seconds per mile off my last effort on this route.
Really pleased with this, a new PB for 8 miles and probably the fastest pace I’ve run for anything over 3 miles, so to keep it going for 8 miles was great.

If I could have cut out the 2 short breathers I took, I’d have broken 7 mins/mile – maybe next time.

This runstreak is really helping with the speed – I spent years around the 8:30 – 9:30 pace, and in the past 3 months I’ve dropped it by almost 90 seconds. It’ll be interesting to see what more I can achieve…