Magnificent Mile RR

I ran this race last week, but haven't had time to write up a report yet since my 6 year old daughter had her birthday on Thursday and we had a party at our house for her on Saturday. This has not been a good year for me as far as injuries and weird things occurring to cause me to not make it to races, so around June I had decided to take it easy the rest of the year and just do sprint tri's and running races for the rest of the year. I really want to improve on my running speed so I set this race as one of my 2nd half of the year goal races and wanted to break 6:30. I think in my whole life the fastest mile I had ever run was 7:40 so it wasn't going to be easy. But then another one of those weird things occurred and I had to take 1 week off from running and 2 weeks off from hard efforts right in the middle of training, so I adjusted the goal to break 7 minutes. I knew also that the adjusted goal was going to be hard to get and if the weather did not cooperate it probably wouldn't happen. Another thing against me is this was a Sunday at 2pm start time. I hate Sunday afternoon races. So here it is one week late with memory lapses and all...

Woke up Sunday morning early as usual and had that strange nervous feeling. Not really sure why I was so nervous for a 1 mile race but there it was, and I had to deal with it until 2pm. Did I mention how I hate Sunday afternoon races? So I decided to get ready and head over around 12:30 since I usually feel better once I am on site and can start feeding off the nervous energy of others. We show up, get the family settled and go for my warm up, the route feels flat and legs feel good. I'm a bit hungry since I ate a small lunch to keep the stomach settled, did I mention I hate Sunday afternoon races?, and didn't want to take a gel since I didn't know what that would do to me but I found the Gatorade stand and had a cup. Then did my strides and saw that my sprints were about as fast as the fast runner's easy pace. Not too encouraging, but I wasn't really there to race them, I was there for me and to support the other people running and walking to help the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation.
Finally it was time for the race to start, it was mid 80's and slightly humid but I wasn't really thinking about that, just trying to remember to start fast and get faster. The start was crazy, all the young kids took off at a dead sprint, then most of them just stopped dead after 100 yards or so. It was a slight uphill to start and I did the first .25 in 1:44, so I was happy that I was right on pace, but my breathing was off, I was wheezing and that was not normal. I decided to back off a bit as the 2nd quarter was downhill and I wanted the wheezing to go away and as long as I was around 3:30 at the half I thought I would be able to make it. I hit the .5 mark at 3:32, so a little slower, but the effort was more sustainable and now I was running with people on the same pace so it just felt better. That of course did not last long as the 3rd 1/4 was mostly up hill, funny how I didn't remember any of these hills from the warm up. I was passing people and being paced by a 13 year old boy who really wanted to finish in front of me, not sure why I inspire that in 13 year olds, but happy to have someone keeping pace. hit .75 in 5:21 due to lack of oxygen going to my brain I was luckily unable to calculate how fast I had to do the last quarter mile I just ran as fast as I could. The finish is a slight downhill, so as soon as I hit the downhill section I started to sprint. I saw the clock at the finish and it said 6:45, I thought I could make so I tried to run faster and almost went over but stayed up and kept right on that edge. Half way to the finish I looked at the clock again and it said 6:57 and I thought I must have entered a time warp because that 12 seconds felt like only 5 but since I was almost done I just kept going and finished in 7:06. It really felt like I just got started and I wanted to run it again. It was really painful, but it was over so quick it wasn't so bad. I do think if the race was in the morning I would have made it under 7, but I can wait for next year...