Adjustments

3 miles in 6/1 run/walk intervals, no cheating. 33:33. That's the short version.

Here's the long version, and an explanation of this post's title: I always warm up and cool down before and after each run by walking for 5 minutes. When I began running, it was at the gym on a treadmill, and so it was easy to see how far I'd walked in those 5 minutes and subtract that from my total mileage. Once I began running outside, things got trickier. I decided to take the mileage  I normally walked during my warmup (0.22 miles) and add it to the beginning and end of my runs. Therefore, when I run outside, the total distance covered is 3.44 miles, for example, but I report it as a 3 mile run.

I know when to stop running and start my cool-down because I've mentally marked several places that I walk to in 5 minutes from my house. When I get to that spot at the end of my run, that's the end of my mileage, and I stop running and mark the time. The problem is that I kept feeling like my times were really short. Maybe I was just better at running outside, but it seemed like I was running faster than I expected. Finally today I measured the distance from my house to one of my stopping spots.

0.31 mi.

Ugh! This means that on a typical run I've been crediting myself with almost a fifth of a mile that I didn't run. No wonder my times seemed so great. So starting today, I'm now adding 0.6 to my runs, to ensure that my warmup and cool-down don't encroach into my running distance. The time at the top of this post is for a run at the new, improved distance (you can see the route here): 3.61 miles.