“If you make it (the 4 minute mile) not only will Nike or Adidas sponsor you, but Ripley’s will have a new entry in ‘Believe it or not.’ Keep at it.”
—My dad
A few random running movie-related thoughts:
1. I finished watching McFarland, USA last week. I don’t want to ruin the end for anyone who might want to see it, but the end was just as inspirational and heartwarming as one would expect from a Disney movie with Kevin Costner as coach.
2. I discovered a movie on Netflix called “4 Minute Mile,” so I watched it last week while my wife was out of town. It’s a decent movie that starred the father from “Step Brothers” and Kim Basinger, who seems to have found a type-cast niche as a white-trash mom (see also, 8 Mile). However, she was much bigger white trash in 8 Mile than she was in 4 Minute Mile, so I guess she’s at least moving in the right direction.
3. I took “Run All Night,” starring Liam Neeson and Ed Harris out of the library. It’s not about running.
I have yet to meet with the potential coach/trainer, so I’m still a little rudderless. However, I watched “4 Minute Mile,” in which a grizzled former track coach (Mr. Miyagi…in fact, he even made a “wax on, wax off” joke) takes on a troubled, but gifted teenage runner and trains him to run the mile. I recognized that it’s a movie, but that doesn’t mean that some of the training methods used in the move are invalid. Admittedly, not only do I not have a river in which to run, I would not choose to run in a river even if I had one nearby.
The biggest takeaway from the movie (other than the fact that I am NOT a highschooler at his physical peak with a realistic shot at breaking a 4 minute mile) is that I should be doing some sort of interval speed training, though that might not be the correct term for what I did on Saturday afternoon and will be doing going forward.
In addition to working full-time, my wife has started her own business and she had a huge presentation out of town last week. I’ve done a lot of single-parenting over the last six months to a year, which has definitely taken a toll, and the last 6-8 weeks, as she’s prepared for this presentation, have been even more “Dad intensive” (on a side note: if anyone asks me if I’m playing Mr. Mom, they’d better be prepared to ask my wife if she’s playing Mrs. Dad. I hate that). So on Saturday afternoon, she told me to go get out of the house and do something for myself, and that she didn’t want to see me for a few hours.
As I got to the gym, I couldn’t decide whether to run suicides on the basketball court or sprints on the track. Two things were working against the basketball court option: 1) I had on running shoes and was worried about spraining my ankle, and 2) there were people playing basketball. Up to the track I went. My plan was that I would alternate sprinting a lap around the track and walking a lap, and no matter how hard it got, or how tired I became, I would not stop until I had sprinted at least half a mile. As a refresher, each lap of the track is 1/16 of a mile.
I was about three steps into the first sprint lap when I felt a twinge in my left knee. “I don’t want to stop,” I thought as I rounded the first turn. “Push through,” I told myself, “pain is only temporary.” Being a lawyer, I of course answered myself to the contrary. “You know, unless you do some permanent damage to your knee. Dumbass.” But the knee calmed down and I was able to sprint at pretty good speed for the full lap. My earbud popped out of my right ear as I sprinted, which was less than ideal, because I count on my music to provide cadence, distract me, and keep me pumped up. I didn’t really feel strained or tired through the first five laps I sprinted, but then it started to get harder. Lap six was tiring. On lap seven, my quads were burning. By the eighth and final sprint lap, I wanted to jog, but I didn’t. I pushed myself and sprinted as fast as I could.
Since the first few times I ran, I haven’t really been sore after running. Saturday was different. I was sore almost immediately and I knew that it would last at least through Sunday. Maybe stretching more both before and after would help, but I doubt it. I liked it though, both the run and the soreness. As a reward, I took myself to AJ’s Beer Warehouse, where I spent some time wandering around the big bottle room of the walk-in “beer cave.” As I write this, I’m very much enjoying a Valencia Gold by Almanac Brewing Co.
Tomorrow begins another week, and it’s more opportunity to get closer to my goal. I like working on the speed and I think I’m going to do the same workout next time I run.
Stay tuned.