multiplication and division

We are not good at math. We are good at writing briefs and fixing muscles but we are not good at math.

One unexpected quirk of training has been the mental challenge of trying to sort out how fast and/or far we are going. Today, for example, we were supposed to run 8 miles but because parts of the Greenbelt are under construction, we had to take a detour through the golf course. Shyla is in charge of keeping track of our distance. While Shyla is many things, she is not a GPS device and therefore we are not really sure exactly how far we went today. We thought we ought to be able to figure it out mathematically. However, two lawyers and one calculator later, we were more confused than when we started. Here's the problem:

If you can run 1.2 miles in 10 minutes, how fast can you run 1 mile? (It might help to know that we run 10 minutes and walk for two minutes. And while we are running, I religiously watch to see how many 1/10th of a mile markers go by before we walk again.)

We solved it like this:

• 10 min. = 600 sec. per 1.2 miles (or 12, 1/10ths of a mile)


• 600/12 = 50 sec. per 1/10th of a mile


• 50 x 10 = 500 sec. per mile


• 500/60 = 8.3 min. per mile (or 8 min. 18 sec. per mile)

This actually looked correct to us until we remembered that we ran over 8.5 min. miles for our tempo run the other day and it felt like we were having our lungs ground up in a blender. We finally decided that my estimate that we were going 1.2 miles per 10 minutes had to be optimistic. I think that must be it...