Introductions:

Hi.  My name is Matt Kretchmar.  This blog is to document my year-long journey to chase a fitness goal of running a sub five minute mile again at my advanced age.  

I decided to set a new fitness goal for myself -- to give myself one year to train to attempt to break the five minute mile barrier.  I do have a running background.  From age 27 to age 33 I was a serious runner, training with a coach, running year round, logging 7 to 10 runs per week, usually in the 80 to 100 mile per week range.   I mostly raced marathons, but during my training I would regularly run 5 minute miles, mostly as speed work on the track.   

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I think my last recorded 5 minute mile was at age 32.   Next year I will be 52.  So there will be a 20 year window of age, time and body changes to overcome.   I basically stopped running at age 33 when my daughter was born.  I was burned out of serious training and needed a change.  So I switched to mountain bike racing.  I did 100 mile mountain bike races for about 8 years.  Then I switched into longer gravel races.  For about 10 years now, I have been doing 200 mile or longer gravel races.  The physiology for riding a bike at a moderate pace for 16 to 24 hours is totally different than that needed to run a fast 5k or a mile.  My body is not only older, but it has also changed into a long distance cycling body, not a svelte and speedy runner body.   

This blog and my accompanying Youtube Channel will document my year-long journey to foolishly chase my youth and the magic 5-minute per mile barrier.  There is a very real possibility this challenge ends as a failure or an utter disaster.  I am not at all sure that I have it in me to run that pace again, or that my body will hold up against the intensity I need in my training regimen.  If I were a betting man, I'd bet against me.  But what the heh, life isn't interesting without difficult challenges.  I'm game.