6:59

That's right: I ran one mile in 6:59. I broke that 7-minute mile barrier. (Barely!)

Here's how I did the time trial today. Last week, I did 7:07 in part because it took so long for the treadmill to get up to speed from 0, so this week I warmed up for two minutes while gradually increasing the treadmill speed (after my 60 minutes of running outside with the gals, of course), noted the distance passed (.15 miles), then turned it on all the way to 8.6 mph. When I had .10 of a mile left, I pushed it up to 9.0. I wanted to do it when I had .15, but my heart rate was climbing and I wasn't entirely sure I had that much left.

However, for that last tenth of a mile, I didn't see an increase in heart rate at all. It increased gradually from the 160s in the beginning to 184 - and hung out there for the final push. Since my max heart rate is 202, I think that means I've still got some room to improve at my current fitness level.

Which is good, because next week I need to do this run in 6:50. Wow that will be fast!

Today we got pretty wet on our outdoor run. It's a frustrating time of year for me. It's getting rainy, which is fine, but it's still warm, which is not fine. The reason I can live in Seattle in the winter is that when it rains here, it's usually snowing in our gorgeous mountains - but it's not snowing in the mountains when it's 54 degrees fahrenheit at 5 a.m. Plus it makes it hard to dress for early-morning runs - I started out with a light rain jacket but quickly got too hot, so I had to just deal with being soaked all the way through.

In other news, my weight was up more than a pound today, which makes no sense whatsoever. I ate well yesterday! Oh well, this is the drawback of weighing myself daily. I really should stop that.