This is the 5th monthly update on my goal to run a 5 minute mile (see post here). I’ll keep track of my training and progress here.
Training
For the most part, I neglected my speed training this month. Instead, I ran a 50k and a half marathon. With the cold weather, the holiday season, and work piling up, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make any progress this winter.
Progress
This seems to be a trend lately. Another month of very little progress. I didn’t even get out to do a mile time trial in November. I’ll just record my 50k and half marathon.
| Date | 400m | 800m | 1 mile (1609m) | 5k | Other | Approximate vdot |
| June 2021 | – | – | 6:36 (baseline) | – | – | 43 |
| July 2021 | 1:11 | – | 6:23 | 24:17 | 1k: 3:50 | 45 |
| August 2021 | – | – | 6:13 | – | – | 46 |
| September 2021 | – | – | 6:12 | – | – | 46 |
| October 2021 | – | – | 6:11 | – | 10k: 46:57 | 47 |
| November 2021 | – | – | – | – | Trail 50k: 6:32:20 HM: 1:46:00 | ? |
Tracking progress by VDOT
Here’s a VDOT table, another way to track running fitness.
As of the end of October 2021, I’m at a VDOT of around 47. I’ll need to get up to a VDOT of 60. I’ve read that, with consistent training, one can expect to increase VDOT by 1 roughly about every 6 weeks. According to this calculation, it will take a minimum of 17×6 weeks, or 102 weeks. That’s about 2 years at a minimum.
Life update
It’s hard to believe I ran a trail 50k and a half marathon in November. All the food in the past couple weeks coupled with very little exercise has me feeling really out of shape.
Real estate has been keeping me very busy this past month even though it’s almost winter. I officially cut my government job hours down to 60% or 3 days/week. I was reading realtor.com’s forecast for 2022, and I thought it was pretty spot on with what I was thinking. I’ve been seeing a lot of buyers entering the market with very little supply to choose from. The number of buyers still outnumbers the number of sellers. Because of that, I think prices will remain elevated but won’t increase as fast as last year. Buyers will have a hard time because the good houses will have multiple offers. Meanwhile, I believe a good number of houses will sit on the market because some sellers will continue to ask for prices higher than market value.
I have one more class (tomorrow), and I’ll be completely done with my UVA CFP coursework. My guess is I probably won’t enter into the field right away or any time soon. I’ll have to more thoughts on that later.
That’s all for now.