New speed record set today

I hate to brag, but today I set a new speed record while running 9 miles(14.8 km) in 1 hour 11 minutes. I managed to break into the 7 minute mile zone, the first time I’ve ever been able to do this for more than a few miles and I felt kind of tired toward the end. It wasn’t so long ago that I could barely do 8 minute miles for more than 2 miles, but then I finally managed to run 9 miles at this pace not too long ago. Today I ran a 7 minute 53 second pace while juggling for 9 miles. I dropped the balls twice.

As I’m sure many of you know, I drank a lot of that new cherry kefir juice(the very low alcohol one mentioned in the previous post) just before I went out for this run. Did the cherry kefir help? I really don’t know, it kind of felt like it did. Cherries are good for runners, but fermenting cherry juice improves it by giving it a vitamin boost(the B family and K family) and a probiotic boost. Interestingly enough, I had just run 21.5 miles(34.6 km) on saturday(this record breaking speed occurred today on monday), and it seems I have already recovered from it(it probably helped that I didn’t run yesterday). Usually it takes longer for me to recover from very long runs like this, and my speed usually suffers for several days after. Is the cherry juice helping that much? And is it the kefir or cherries that are helping more? Even more intriguing is the possibility of unknown biologically active compounds that may be involved in improving my running,

Unfortunately I can’t do a real study, using an alternate reality version of myself not drinking the cherry kefir drink as a control, so it’s difficult to say with confidence the cherry kefir drink is helping. It certainly doesn’t hurt though. I’m wondering how much I can improve, especially when the weather cools down. It was about 74 F(23.3 C) when I ran today, and little on the humid side and cloudy.

One thing’s for sure – the local runners will hate me even more. At least I didn’t have either of my wonderful vegan T-shirts on today while running, that really ruffles the feathers of other runners. I’m even getting cursed at these days. I don’t mean to cause butt-hurt, but it is kind of funny, especially when you consider that some of these people think vegans can’t run or be athletic. I’m hardly the fastest runner around, but I am the only joggler in the immediate area.