The Science Behind the Mile

This post was inspired by a friend who graciously gave me a ride home from campus earlier tonight. The topic of running came up. My friend was surprised when I mentioned how much strategy and science there is behind racing specific distances. This post is an attempt to explain the science I have learned to race with through the mile. I know there are others out there, but my own biased opinion is that this one is the best. I apologize now for anything that I fail to explain clearly.

High schools in Texas race a fake mile. We actually run a 1600m race which is technically a little bit longer than a mile but is much simpler than trying to get the conversion correct down to the inch, wait centimeter, wait... screw the conversions. That is why we race a 1600m "mile". Outside of Texas, and throughout the rest of the world, the common "mile" race is 1500m long. But we are Texas and everything is bigger in Texas, including our mile :)

Austin Marathon -- 4 Marathons in 4 Months = Complete

Let me begin this by letting everyone who reads this know that I absolutely HATE hills! I completely understand why John the Baptist preached "Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low..." Luke 3:5. This obviously points out that Jesus very strongly disliked hills and John the Baptist was trying to help Him out a bit and get rid of the hills and mountains so Jesus wouldn't have to deal with them. Apparently they forgot about the New World (probably because it hadn't been discovered yet) and never got around to removing the hills from Austin.

Anyways, to the real point of this post. This past Sunday (Feb. 19) my brother and I ran the Austin Marathon with a priest friend, Fr. Michael.