Start Time: 8/12/08, 6:10pm
Location: Mount Vernon Trail
Distance: 6 miles
Average Pace: 8:48min/mile
Total Miles For August: 32 miles

My last attempt at a progressive run was seriously off-pace, never really hitting the times I was supposed to, always too fast or too slow. The idea is to start the first mile at a 9:30min/mile, then drop 15 seconds off each mile. I was originally going to run this on the W&OD trail, but on the way home the Mount Vernon Trail just looked so nice… so I took a detour and ran there. (Which turned out to be nice because during my warm-up walk down through the creaky bridge, I ran into canis_lupus_va on his way home from a bike ride, and we stopped and chatted for about ten minutes.)

The first mile was a little fast, but from that point on the GPS swears I hit all of my planned splits within 3 seconds. Hurrah! Much, much better. Having the GPS certainly helped out a lot; I needed them because the mile markers are nowhere near the Roosevelt Island parking lot and are only on the full mile, but it helped keep me on pace a lot more. Very, very nice. (But can I do a 8-mile version now? *gulp*)

Splits: 9:07, 9:13, 9:01, 8:42, 8:30, 8:13