Oprah Five

I remember reading an article about Oprah training for the Marine Corps Marathon. She was doing two a day running workouts. She finally accomplished an 8:00/mi for 5 straight miles. I was astonished at how fit you'd have to be to run five miles in 40 minutes. At the time, I had a hard enough time walking 3.5 miles in an hour.

This evening I went down to the local high school track to run some of those speed workouts. I was going alone. I laughed as I pulled up in my Jeep to find fans in the stands and a football game in progress. I laughed because I actually thought for 2 second about just doing my running there anyways.

Off to the local bike path I went instead. I decided to do a quick 4 miles up and back. As I was running along I remembered this Oprah things. I said, "self, I bet I could beat that right here and now." I'm going to run 5 instead of 4.

At 1 miles I crossed a busy highway, lots of traffic tonight so I stood there waiting for what seemed like 2 minutes. I'm guessing it was actually 30 seconds.

At 2.5 miles my left thigh sudden felt weird so I decided to walk to check it out. I was fine so I went back to running.

4 miles I'm back crossing the road again on my return trip. Busy again...likely 20 seconds this time. I then ran the last mile at a nice even pace, but 30 seconds slower than the first mile.

I ended my little 5 mile workout in 39:36 for a 7:49/mile pace. I was pleased to at least be in the Oprah league of fitness.

The Walt Disney World Marathon is fast approaching for me. Less than 3 months now!