Biggest chunks of time you or others have cut off your PR's and how you did it?

sideways slim wrote:

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear - but you can make a darn nice sow's ear purse.

This is a fabulous modification of the saying hehe.

I began running seriously in the middle of my junior year at Princeton. I ran a half marathon in 1:39. (I think that's 7:40 pace.) I quickly got the idea that I could run lots of miles over the summer and make Varsity B as a senior walk-on. So I ran about 40-50 mpw over the summer, 7 weeks of which I spent in Newfoundland.

Came back to school after labor day. Coach Larry Ellis let me run one practice with the team. I, ah, labored. 7:00 pace was NOT my easy pace, let's just say. So I gave up that dream. But I kept up running.

I ran my next race in February: 10K in 41:23. I kept running hard fartleks as spring came on, ran three or four more 10Ks, and basically lowered my PR a full minute each time out, so that by early June I'd run 37:21.

I was 21. I moved out to Berkeley, got a part-time job flipping burgers, and kept putting in the miles up in the Berkeley hills and down on the flats.

By November I'd run a 1:20:28 half-marathon. 6:09 pace. I'd also run a 17:33 5K on the track and a 36:15 road 10K. Probably coulda made Varsity B, barely, with those kinds of times.

Anyway, that's the progression I made from June '78 to December '79.

Youth!

I once improved my 400 time from 56.2, 54.68, 54.29, 53.29, 52.14 in 5 consecutive races during my junior year of high school. And ended up running 51.6 at the final meet.