Mar 30th: 6 miles in 00:55.
Mar 31th: 4 miles in 00:36.
I tried some upper body workouts before running today and it felt pretty good actually.
Apr 5th: upper body workout and 4 miles in 00:34.
Let's see if I can keep this 8.5 minute mile pace.
Apr 8th: 6 miles in 00:54.
Apr 10th: 6 miles in 00:49.
I am trying to increase my cadance from ~160 to ~180. Supposedly higher cadance with shorter stride distance actually lowers impact on joints while achieving higher speed. It seems to be working so far: I haven't finished 6 miles in 50 minutes since last September. I did feel a bit more strain on outer calf muscles and had to loosen my shoe laces, but these went away today.
Apr 14th: 9 miles in 01:15.
After consciously increaseing my cadance for a few runs, I finally noticed source of the outer calf pain: I was overstriding and thus bending my ankles a lot more often than necessary. Once I figured that out, the run become quite a lot easier. This is the best time I have ever got on a 9 miler!
Apr 16th: 4 miles in 00:32.
Apr 18th: 2.5 miles in 00:19.
Apr 19th: 2.5 miles in 00:22.
Apr 20th: 3.5 miles in 00:29.
Apr 22th: 13.3 miles in 2:00:35.
I started running with hydration pack, water bottles, and a small stash of food to prepare myself for longer runs. So far it's going well. My new, better cushioning socks are amazing - pain in my feet disappeared immediately, and I finally felt well enough to do a half marathon after quite a few months of hiatus.
On a side note, despite my effort to minimize social media/external services I use, I started using Strava to track my runs. I made the switch mainly because I recently found out the Moves app that I regularly use was bought by Facebook years ago. Now I need something else to track my runs and without better options, I picked Strava.