Today saw a couple of sporting moments for me. Once my half-marathon was over, I switched back to training for speed for a 5k race. I do not remember my 5k times from high school, especially from my sophomore year when I was relatively fast, but my fastest post-high-school time for a 5k is 18:57, which I managed to get when I was in college (around age 21 or so). My current goal is to break that time, and thus set a new personal record (a PR in the racing world), at least as far as I remember. I think it would be pretty spiffy to be in better shape at 37 than I was when I was 21.

To realistically pull off an 18:50 5k or so, I need to be able to run at 10 mph on my treadmill, which is an 18:36 5k time. Treadmill running is slightly easier than road running, so I need to be able to do better than my race goal in order to achieve it. My plan is fairly simple – run on the treadmill for 25 minutes, and increase the speed by 0.1 mph per week. This seems to work pretty well (at least until 9.2 or 9.3 mph, when it starts getting hard).

Well, as of this morning, I got back to 9.0 mph. That is about a 20:40 5k time, and is still a full 1.0 mph below my goal, but I’m still pleased with how things are going. I’d like to be able to try to get my sub-nineteen time by around St. Patrick’s day if possible, about 18 weeks away. So, I have 18 weeks to increase my speed by 1.0 mph. I’m hopeful that I can do that.

The second sporting moment was that I finally ranked at “pro” level on Wii golf. To be a pro in Wii sports, you need to rate at a level of 1000 or higher. As of this evening, I managed to get to 1047 in golf. I find I like golf on the Wii – I seem to be able to play the wind and to get myself out of holes (ha!) that I get myself into. It is much fun.

I’ll try to keep running updates coming as they come. Running gets much harder around 9.2 mph or so, so I do not expect to get to 9.5 mph until around Christmastime at the earliest, and more likely around New Year’s.