TITLE: One Last Milestone
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 30, 2004  7:48 AM
DESC: A good year of running comes to a close.  1900 miles -- wow.
-----
BODY:
I reached my last "round number" milestone of the year running
this morning.  The sixth mile of my track work-out was my 1900th
mile of 2004.  To celebrate, I burned it as fast as I could and
ran the fastest mile of my life, 6:32.  That number seems unreal
to me...  When I began training for my
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/chicago-marathon/">
   Chicago Marathon</A>
in the spring of 2003, I doubt I could run a mile under 8 minutes.
Practice and persistence pay off.  So does the good fortune of
staying healthy.

I'm at 1902 miles now.  Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, so I'll get
one more run in for the year, an easy 5-miler outside.  I don't
remember how many miles I ran last year, but I think it was in
the 1500-1600 range.  Don't expect me to increase my mileage by
the same amount in 2005. :-)  I may well increase a bit, but I'd
like to continue to get faster.  If I could make 8:00 miles feel
like a walk in the park, I will be able to reach my next goal
for the marathon, circa October of next year: 3 hours, 30 minutes.
Wish me luck!

<STRONG>Update</STRONG>:  I checked my log for 2003.  My mileage
that year was 1281.8.  I'd forgotten that I didn't run much the
first three months of that year, due to weaker habits and a
persistent cold.  You can be certain that I won't run 2500 miles
next year!
-----