that's right, as you all know, i've embarked on a journey to run 26.2 miles and finish the marine corps marathon on october 29th! at the same time, i'm also fundraising for the leukemia and lymphoma society; you can check out my webpage at http://www.active.com/donate/tntnca04/tntncaSCheng but please keep checking back here for more updates on my crazy adventure!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

are you fit enough for the army?

yesterday regis and i took a field trip out to ballston, virginia. why, you ask, would such urbanites take the metro out to the suburbs? well...

when regis was doing his 1 year military service (which was a required part of his engineering university at ecole polytechnique) they used to get tested regularly for physical fitness. one of the tests the army used was the cooper test, which tests how far you can run in 12 minutes. then, depending on the distance, your physical condition is categorized as one of the following: very good; good; average; bad; or very bad. regis wanted to test himself again (he likes to take the test about once a year) so we trekked out to the only track that i know of, out in virginia.

our results? in order for regis to be classified as very good, he needed to run more than 2800 meters in 12 minutes (which equals 7 laps around the track -- each lap is 400 meters). he did it and ran 3125 meters in 12 minutes!

and how did i do? not as well. i needed to run 2700 meters in 12 minutes (6.75 laps) to be classified as very good. instead, i did 2500 meters in 12 minutes, which puts me at good! (good ranges from 2200-2700 meters in 12 minutes). considering that i'd never done the test before and "practice is required" for doing well on the test, i was quite happy with my results. maybe next time i'll hit the very well classification!

when talking to regis about yesterday's success (all the other times he's tried it, he's never done as well as he did yesterday) he hypothesized that the success might have been in part due to my new timex ironman running watch. this watch has a split function so that once you start the timer, at each lap you can hit the split button and it will record your total time and also your time for that lap. this then allows you to see how you are doing at every lap so that you can speed up or slow down accordingly. pretty neat huh?

anyway, i've got some photos from this run, which i'll try to remember to post up later! until saturday's 14 mile...

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