Monthly Archives: May 2010

Three Years Old – Happy Blogiversarry

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via Flickr kharied

Wow this project is three years old! Thanks for coming along for the ride!  In honor of this birthday event I’ll be giving away a free entry to the June 20th Greenway’s Gridiron Gallop 5k.  To be entered to win all you need to do is comment, wishing Team Cross Runs a Happy 3rd Birthday.  You can recieve an additional entry by sending a tweet with a birthday message including me @crossn81 somewhere in the tweet.  Good luck! All entries must be submitted by midnight CDT on May 28.

Contest is only open to US residents.  I’ll contact you if you are the winner with pre-registration information.  There is no cash-value for this prize.  If you enter, win, and can’t race the event then sorry about your good and bad luck!  Feel free to wish me Happy Birthday and indicate “no entry” to remove yourself from the contest.  Blah, blah, blah.  Team Cross is not affiliated with the Greenway Gridiron Gallop and isn’t responsible for you or your actions on the 20th.

Thanks and good luck!

Quarter-Mile Speed Test

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Usain Bolt in celebration after his 100m victo...
Image via Wikipedia

How fast can you run a 1/4 of a mile, 400 meters, or once around the track?  My 400 meter PR is 52 seconds which I obtained in the last race of my college career in the middle of an 800 during a 4×800 meter relay, the second 400 didn’t go quite as well!  If I had been able to continue that pace it would have been a 3:28 mile!! Or a 1:30 marathon.  That would be amazing, too bad I couldn’t even hold it for a second 400 meters!

The current marathon world record is 2:03:59 by Haile Gebrselassie which is a 4:43 mile or a 70 second 400.  The current 100 meter world record is 9.58 held by Usain Bolt, this is a 2:35 mile pace or 1:07:19 marathon, impressive!

What’s the point of all these numbers? A writer for the Star-Tribune decided to try and match Jason Lehmkuhle’s Boston Marathon pace (5:03) for 400 meters. Lehmkule ran a 2:12:24 for ninth place.  Can you run a flat out 5:03? My TC 1 Mile time is 5:26 from last year, so I couldn’t even keep up with Jason for a mile.  So Lehmkule’s average 400 meter time was 75 seconds.  The Strib writer, Michael Rand (athlinks), ran a 76 second quarter and was in his own words “spent”.

It was an interesting experiment that shows how amazing the elite runners really are.  Rand is in training for a marathon and has a PR of 4:30.  I like what he says:

I could not quite even run 1 percent of a marathon distance at a world-class pace — let alone conceive of actually running the other 99 percent or so that fast.

How far can you run at a world class pace?

Be sure to check out the full article and video.

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