5 Mile Race

NYRR held a 5 mile race today in the park. I went out the night before to a few bars, spending the most time at one called T.G. Whitney's, singing karaoke. I was quite a hit, performing "Folsom Prison Blues", "I Walk The Line", "Roadhouse Blues" and "Ring of Fire". By the time I went to bed it was about 4 a.m., but luckily the race started on the 102nd Street Transverse, a 5 minute walk from my apartment. So I got up at 8:57 and left the house by 9:11 a.m.

I couldn't find Nathan but got as close to the front as I could. Usually he is easily visible due to his height and tendency to wear the TFK green at races and a white hat, so when I didn't see him I assumed he wasn't in attendance.

The race started and was forced to weave in and out of the slower runners who annoyingly line up near the start of th race (you are supposed to line up near large umissable signs that reperesent your pace per minute). The big clock read 6:59 as I passed mile 1, with a 31 second lag between the gun and when I crossed the start, that meant a 6:28 mile. Mile 2 went faster as the clock read 13:20, so that one only took 6:21. I grabbed water and took a little slip between 1 and 2, not taking much time at all. I had gotten a small Gatorade at the deli downstairs and drank that en route - for a 5 miler I didn't really need more hydration that that, except for the fact that my mouth gets kind of dry when I run.

The Mile 3 marker read 19:39, so it that took me 6:19. Mile 4 contained the notorious Cat Hill, the biggest one we would have to contend with during the race, and at that marker the clock read 25:59 even, so I did that mostly uphill mile in 6:20.

I then performed the calculation and to beat my goal I needed to do a 6 minute mile (my goal was to beat 32:00). I actually knew I had some kind of lag between chip and gun time so I could break it fairly easily, but I figured I would make a push and see if I was physically capable of running a sub 6 minute mile and beating the big clock in 31:xx.

I thought about our training, when we frequently do speed work and do 1 mile intervals, sometimes between 72n and 90th, other times between 88th and 102nd (not quite a mile). So I was in familiar territory - this was the spot where I would often race my teammates so I just thought of it as another event. The strangers I saw ahead of me I pretended were Nathan, Erik, Avi, Pete & Greg, the guys I had raced all summer long. Some tall dude passed in front of me, so I spent a couple of hundred yards drafting him. When we got to the big downhill (which was the hill we walked up last week at the 60K), I moved around him and started hauling it towards the end (about a quarter mile to go). I ran strong, some guy passed me, I passed him back, he passed me, but it kept me going and prevented some other guy whose footsteps I could hear from catching us. I took the corner sharply making the turn onto 102, cutting off some guy in the process, but he just went out wide and went ahead of me from behind. Oh well, not going to beat him. Sped up even faster for the final 75 yard sprint to the end, and crossed in 32:06.

So my last mile was 6:05 which I was pretty happy about. I finished 93rd out of 4,993 entrants, my best percentile finish in a race ever (top 2% - actually 1.86%). My average pace per mile was 6:19. When I did this race last year, injured from the marathon and the 60K, I did it in a 12:45 pace! I have no healthy 5 milers to compare it to, but I ran it faster than my fastest 4 mile pace, which was 6:36 (done twice essentially, I also did a 6:37). I even ran it faster than my fastest 3.1 mile time, which was 6:28 (done twice).

There is a 10K next week, it will be interesting to see how well I do. Oh yes, and Nathan did run but was in disguise, he finished well ahead of me in 75th place with a clock time of 31:41 (25 seconds better), but on the chip he only beat me by one lousy second. Bastard! (He started very close to the front, only a 7 second lag vs. my 31 second lag. And we both beat Claire, the fastest woman on the team, who beat Lance (and us) at the marathon, so that was fun. :-)