Marathon Talk Magic Mile

The one-mile race is a rarity these days. The iconic distance has been replaced by the metric precision of 1,500m - it's fairly hard to find a one-mile distance race these days. But what if 3.75 laps of the 400m track just isn’t enough? You want the full 4? And then maybe another 9m, you know, for fun? Every year Marathon Talk can help you in this quest.

Marathon Talk’s Magic Mile challenge is an annual event at the close of summer that encourages everyone of every ability to get out there and smash out a mile as fast as they can.

There are dozens of Magic Mile events of all sizes being held, and today there’s a special virtual mile event by Marathon Talk. There are some big names signed up including Olympians ScottOverall, Tom Daley, and Alistair and Jonathon Brownlee. The rules are simple, at some point today, Saturday 31st August, run a mile and record the time.

My Magic Mile path by the Zeller see (Lake Zell) - and an orange Ironman buoy ready for tomorrow!

I decided to start from the hotel where we’re staying in Zell am See, Austria, for the Ironman 70.3 Zell am See Kaprun on Sunday. I walked through the village and down to the lake. I jogged a half mile up, turned around, and jogged back. I even set my Garmin units to “statute” for the very first time ever.

Not the fastest mile I've run by any stretch of the imagination!

I'm not quite sure how I managed to burn 130 calories on a gentle 1,609m - oops, I mean "1 mile" - jog, but never mind. This probably isn’t the best thing to do the day before a race, but so what – I’m not a contender for the podium so I may as well have some fun while I’m here. Maybe next year I can "smash one out hard", as they say.

As soon as Marathon Talk's magic mile page is fixed, I'll even log it. There's a prize draw for everyone running the Saturday virtual mile, a pair of Adidas Boost trainers up for grabs.