Steve the Owl's Blog

This is my latest update in my quest for the five-minute mile before my 40th birthday. With my physical fitness improving, and running a 5K road race in September, I decided that October would be the time for me to have my first one-mile time trial since 1999. Knowing that there are no road races for the mile in the local area, I decided to use one of the local tracks. Based on the shape that I was in in time for the race, and knowing what happened when I decided to set a somewhat aggressive goal for the 5K race (I improved from 35:04 on the track to 29:48.6 on the road in three weeks), deciding that I would be satisfied with a mile in eight minutes or less, 1:20 less than my first mile in the race. I originally scheduled the run for October 22nd, two days before my 31st birthday.

The Need for Speed

One of the most essential elements of preparing for a distance run is the awareness that all runs beneficial to improving time can be boiled down into two categories: longer than the race, or faster than the race. Because my run was one mile, the first part would be pretty easy, because my regular run for the day was 2-4 miles, with long runs of 5-8 miles once a week. So, I decided to commit myself to speed work on Tuesdays or Wednesdays leading up to the big day. My goal was to do eight 400-meter intervals with a 200-meter walk recovery between them. Because I wanted to run a mile in eight minutes or less, I knew that that was a two-minute lap around the track. So, I decided to try to finish each lap in 1:50 or less. (Because I knew that it would do me no good for my purposes, I knew that it was time to stop if I couldn’t run each of the intervals in less than 2:00, so that was when I knew to stop if I couldn’t get all eight.)

The first interval workout was an eye-opener. I was able to run the first four intervals between 1:48 and 1:51, so I felt like things were going well, but not quite as well as I’d hoped. So, I ran the fifth interval, working to push myself to get back to my goal pace, but my legs just weren’t there for me as I ran the fifth interval in 1:56. What speed I had abandoned me in the sixth interval, as I tried to dig deeper twice, but there just wasn’t anything left, and I looked at my stopwatch in disappointment as it read 2:08.

So, I decided to give it another try the next week, still determined to make my goal of eight intervals in 1:50 or less. I did the first mile between 1:46 and 1:49, so I felt like I was in a really good place. At the end of the fifth interval, my lungs started to wreak vengeance as I finished in 1:49.96, just under 1:50, so I decided to walk just a little bit slower for my recovery. I did the sixth interval in 1:52, but I could feel that I was getting a second wind. So, with some optimism, I ran the seventh interval and found out that it was back as I saw the time on my watch registering at 1:48. So, I decided to give everything that I had on that last interval for the day, and I was not disappointed as I saw that I ran it in 1:44.

So, the next week, I decided to try to run in 1:40 or less for each of the intervals, and I had some success, running the eight laps in times ranging from 1:37 to 1:44. So, I felt confident that I could run my eight-minute mile. However, my blister problems returned, so my run was postponed by a week.

The Big Day

On October 29th, I went to the track for the big day. I knew that the best strategy for focusing on my pace was to look at my watch every 100 meters, because any 100 meters covered in more than 30 seconds meant that I had to pick up the pace in order to meet my goal. However, I was not completely ready for what happened at the first interval, as I ran in 25 or 26 seconds, so I knew that I needed to slow down just a little bit in order to maintain my endurance for the full time trial, and I was at the 200 mark in 54 seconds, with the first lap in 1:55.70, telling me that I was in a good place.

Then, came the second and third laps, which are the place that people running the mile absolutely hate. This is when you start to feel the oxygen debt come into play, but you know that there is still quite a way to go. However, I kept up with my strategy of looking at my watch every 100 meters, and I saw the lap times go by at 1:56.97 and 1:58.22. This put my 1200-meter split at 5:50.89, meaning that I had 2:09.11 to finish my goal of a mile in eight minutes or less. I saw the stopwatch at 1300 meters at about 6:20, so I knew that my goal was at hand, so I decided to start to make my final kick. With 200 meters to go, I put a little more speed behind it, and I crossed the finish line at 7:45.36, meaning that my last lap was my fastest, at 1:54.47, and my 800-meter splits were nearly even, 3:52.67 and 3:52.69

This was a lesson in goal setting for me. I knew that I had a place to build, and now I am working to see if I can run a mile for my next birthday in under seven minutes, or even less than that depending on my time trials in between. Using Nine Plus Nine Thinking, I know that, for my ultimate goal of making it to 5:00, that means that I have to improve by 2:45.36, which is simply 33 improvements of five seconds, or 17 improvements of ten seconds. What other goals to you have that seem far off that can be done in smaller increments?

One of the things that has amazed me the most in the world of business is the dichotomy between those who seem to try to make things too difficult, and those who try to make them too easy. I think that the steps themselves to success in business are pretty basic, although some of them definitely take know-how, and we cannot ignore the fact that there are some external and intangible forces that must always be accounted for. It is times like these when I am reminded of something my sixth-grade teacher said in math class that has given me a lot of confidence whenever I think about it:

Every addition problem ultimately breaks down to nothing bigger than “what is nine plus nine?” There may be a lot of steps, but this is what it is at its most basic.

The more I thought about that, the more that I realized what a profound statement that really was. Of course, in a room full of 11- and 12-year-olds, we did not realize what he meant at the time, and some of the people who had difficulty with math really seemed offended by his statement. Then, he explained it by putting a math problem on the board, and his statement was right, because any two numbers that you added was a series of additions with basic elements that were no more than 9+9, no matter how big the number got.

What This Means for Business

I am not trying to see that the world of business is nothing more than adding single-digit numbers. However, at its core, there are several basic elements to any business. Look at blogs: some blogs can look pretty complicated, but once you get the hang of it, some of the plugins are extremely easy to operate and maintain. While there are definitely going to be times when there are things that we don’t understand yet, I think that we can definitely use the things that we do know and build each of them by breaking them down into smaller parts that are not so overwhelming.

How I Applied This Later

In high school, when I did track and cross-country, I had trouble in the beginning doing the run up Oakford Avenue, the steepest hill in town. Then, I was told something counterintuitive that was really surprising. I was told not to look at the top of the hill, because that would only make it seem farther away. The road was paved, so simply trust my navigation and focus on the next step. The very first time I did it, I was able to touch the steps at the top of the hill without resorting to walking once! This was another example of Nine Plus Nine Thinking (I just came up with that phrase. I don’t mind if you share, but please acknowledge that you got it from your old friend Steve ) at work. After all, the elements of running are really simple, and it involved lots of smaller actions, but the end result was the same.

Even Easier Than School

Still, despite such advice, there are some people who are not as good in math at others. There are also going to be some people who are better at marketing and blogging than others. However, we don’t have to have the perfect blog in order to make our business work. All we really have to do is have the basic tools in place. Something else that I’ve noticed is that so many bloggers are more than happy to share the basics with others for free. With that in mind, I know that nothing is too difficult, and I know that in time I will reach my goals because everything that we need can be broken down to its most basic element where it can be understood.