Hey everybody. As you can see, I'm attempting to break 4 minutes in the mile... downhill. I've recently run a 4:04 1600 on a flat track, and instead of training harder and working those 6 seconds down...I've decided I want to break it NOW instead of later.
Well, its not really my decision...well sort of, but not really. After a night of trash talking and pasta, I told a teammate of mine that I would break 4 minutes in the mile this year (by the end of 2005...this was in early october). If I accomplished this feat he exclaimed that he would run a naked mile. We shook on it. So the next weekend I went out and did a time trial just to see where I was at...and somehow pulled that 4:04 out of my ass. Well, then the trash talking really got heated, and then it cooled down a lot. Anyway, long story short, I kinda slacked off on my speed training...and well, just training in general. I'm pretty sure I'm still in 4:04 shape for the 1600...but I'm running out of time now. And since we never specified on what surface this mile was to be run on, I'm taking advantage of that and running it downhill.
So while everybody is still in school and can watch to verify, late this Friday night, I will attempt to barrel down a one way street in order to win the above described bet.
But also, to be a man about it, I will attempt a REAL mile on a track later this month after some decent training.
I've used "Google Earth" to measure it out to the hundredth of a foot and will also use a car just to see if there's a huge difference or anything. The elevation difference is almost 200ft...going from 353ft to 157ft pretty steadily, no sudden drop offs...except for maybe the first 20yds.
Now, here's where I ask help from the letsrun community. How many of you have raced a downhill mile? Is this too steep? Should I worry about going out too hard? Is there a different strategy I should employ since this is downhill...such as positive splits vs. negative splits vs. even pacing? What should I do tomorrow in terms of a pre-race workout? Maybe some downhill 200's to get the feel of it? Also...does anybody think I could break 3:50? I think I remember reading that Steve Scott ran a 3:30 downhill mile, which is 17 seconds faster than his pr.
Well Gang, thanks a lot for your help and I'll be sure to keep you all posted on this extremely stupid event.
P.S. I don't want to hear about how, "Ohhh this is so bad for you...blah blah blah." I'm gonna do it. And plus, I regularly recover from stupid stuff pretty well anyways. Thanks again.