This was my 1000th mile of 2013, thanks in part to some strategic maneuvering over the past couple of weeks. I guess it’s good that I at least achieved that, since I am not exactly pleased with the result of this race. I am actually very, very pissed off.
I have wanted to run this race for what seems like forever. It is always on a Saturday. I was all but delirious with excitement when I learned it would be on a Sunday this year.
Based on my last 10K, McMillan predicted a 6:31 mile. Ha, ha, very funny. But back in May, I ran a mile time trial — in bad weather — in 6:50. 6:45, therefore, seemed like a perfectly reasonable goal. So that’s my reach goal, my realistic goal, and sub-7:00 as my “if you can’t do that then you’re hopeless” goal.
Ever since the Battle of Brooklyn in mid-August, my ITB has been giving me problems. I can’t remember when I last walked down a flight of stairs normally. There was not a chance in hell that I was going to skip this race, because it will probably be years before I get the chance to do it again; but I really would have liked to have been able to do it without being halfway injured. I never warm up before races, but I most likely would have today (who runs just one mile?!)… except that it takes about a mile for my knee to start hurting, and it hurts less when I run faster, so I skipped the warmup. Fat lot of good it did me… my knee still started to complain halfway through the race.
To my credit, I did not look at my watch once. I didn’t really have to, since there were clocks every quarter mile, and the street signs told me where I was — every five blocks is a quarter mile. The first quarter mile is downhill, the second is uphill, the third is downhill, and the final quarter is flat to the finish. I’ve never run a mile race before, and I’m used to going out too fast at the start of a 5K and reigning myself in. I shouldn’t have done that today — I should have just let myself go. Because look at my quarter mile splits:
1:38, 1:53, 1:40, 1:38.
With the exception of the second quarter — the uphill — my splits are pretty even, basically just under a 6:40 pace. Even if the uphill killed me, if I hadn’t been pulling back so much on the downhills, it wouldn’t have mattered as much as it did.
Because my official finish time is 6:54, which is slower than my time trial was. I know I wasn’t running on a bad knee then, but I don’t want to use that as an excuse; it sounds like a copout. For heaven’s sake, my average HR in this race was around what it is during most of my easy runs! Maybe the ITBS contributed to the crappy finish time, but part of it was definitely my fault — I had no idea how to pace myself in a mile race. As a result I didn’t push myself as hard as I could have, and I know it.
And it will probably be years before I get another shot at this.
Running Break 