I ran ten miles in under an hour. It took eight thousand miles to prepare.

It was a trivial training session for me last night, definitely a fast one — I do speed workouts about twice a week, and this was a “tempo” effort — but I wasn’t going too hard.

Ten miles in less than an hour means running every mile in under six minutes. My exact pace was 5.59 minutes/mile.

Does it sound like I am very athletic?

I am now. I’m not just athletic; I am an athlete now.

But I love reminiscing about my journey. It wasn’t always like this.

Exactly three years ago, I started to run more. It was in the initial months of the pandemic year. The improvement was very gradual. I wasn’t a beginner because I had enjoyed a bit of running, but my level of running was at a completely different level. Facebook sometimes shows you “memories,” and it showed me this post from April 14th, 2020:

“Addicted” to interval running sounds a bit cringe, but such was the foundation of my improvement at running. I had run and jogged for two decades without much variety and then discovered the transformational power of interval running. For one thing, it helped me lose weight — I dropped thirty pounds between the spring and fall of 2020.

I started to improve in the early months of 2020, but a sub-six-minute mile was elusive. I was getting closer, going all out, but for a long time couldn’t quite break it.

Fast forward three years.

I am running a marathon three weeks from today, targeting a 6.18 minutes/mile pace for a 2h45min result. I have a marathon at the end of this year that I plan to run in under 2 hours and 40 minutes. The pace required is a few seconds above six minutes per mile — this was my fastest mile three years ago.

What did it take to achieve this improvement?

Well, the answer is not complicated. Running every day.

Here’s my Garmin “odometer”: