Last night, at the Sacred Heart-Griffen High School Track, I competed in the 8th heat of the 3rd annual Sizzling Mile. I missed last years event, held at the Springfield High School's "square" track, due to my son only being about two weeks old at the time. At the inaugural event I ran the full mile in 5:50 and I was looking to drastically improve that time last night.
Based on my training, and my earlier trash talking in my blog, I predicted that I could run a 5:25 mile at last night's event. I showed up to the track early and helped get people registered until the first heat started. My arch-nemesis, the Bionic Woman, and I ran about two miles for a warm-up and then I watched the next few heats until it was time to stride out and report for my heat.
I was in my heat with the Bionic Woman, David D., Jordan B., and other assorted high school athletes and age group studs from the running club. Our honorary starts sent us on our way from a classice waterfall start and the early pace was very frenetic as we jockeyed for position. I could tell at the 150 mark that I was going to be in trouble if I didn't ease off and settle into my race pace. I let a little group set up ahead of me, consisting of David D., a junior high stud from Rochester and a few others. I hit the 400 in 1:20.86 and spent the next lap working my way into pouncing distance of the group I was chasing. I hit 800 a step or two behind my prey in 2:42.36 with a lap time of 1:21.50. Upon passing through the halfway point I surged very hard so that there was no doubt that I meant to break the runners I was passing. I'm sure that the spectators thought I had miscounted laps and was mounting my finishing kick a lap premature but I surged hard by design because I have learned, eleven years after my last high school track meet, that I always slow down too much the third lap. Who says I never learn my lessons? I passed the junior high stud and David D. and found myself in a no man's land between packs as I crossed the 1200 in 4:04.86 with 400 split of 1:22.50. I surged once more to discourage anyone behind me but had a weak mental moment on the backstretch where the oxygen debt hit me a little. I convinced myself, with just over 200 remaining, that I was only going to be in pain for about another 40 seconds and I finished strong with a 403 meter time, this is a full mile after all, of 1:23.00. The time on my watch read 5:27.86. I little slower than my prediction but nothing that I'm going to cry over. I'm quite happy with my race.
I broke the old 25-29 age group record of 5:35.86 with my performance, as did David D. with his 5:34 showing. Unfortunately, two minutes after my heat ended, the REALLY fast guys started their race. The 9th heat was won with a time of 4:35 and a 28 year old from Peoria ran a 4:52. I figure I held my age group record for about seven minutes or so. I'm okay with it because the two age groups below mine and the four above all had records below 5:00 and it just made all the 25-29 year olds look slow.
I placed 17th overall, a few ticks ahead of the Bionic Woman who ran 5:30.99 for 18th and first overall female. I beat her for the first time in nine tries and she said she doesn't really like getting beat by me so I'm guessing that it will probably take me nine more tries to beat her again.
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3 comments:
Congrats on the third decade PR!
And impressively even splits! Why couldn't we ever do that as high schoolers? When we ran the 1600 against one another in the Prairieland Conference meet 11 years ago, I think that my fastest lap was a full 8 or 9 seconds faster than my slowest lap.
Same here Nate. I'm fairly confident that I didn't run anything close to resembling even splits in our duel at Conference. If I had I probably would have beat you and gone on to make All-State. That would have been pretty cool if the Prairieland Conference had placed a representative in the three longest races at the State Meet that year.
Also, I forgot that the full mile is actually 1,609.344 meters. My last lap was 409.344 meters instead of the 403 I said it was.
She may be chasing you in your dreams aaron, I'd watch out.
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