Fellas,
Thanks for all the encouragement in this crazy mile project. And, um, yep, ran Saturday’s master’s mile in the old xc flats. Might be time to get some spikes…
The Report:
Last fall, I spotted a small hand-written poster at the New England Cross Country championships at Franklin Park: Master’s Mile at Boston Indoor Games, 4:40 qualifying time. Suddenly my plan for a spring marathon turned into a dream of, at age 41, beating my best mile time, 4:37, run 23 years earlier in high school.
I began running 200s and 400s, instead of 20-mile Sunday runs. I cut down to 25 focused miles a week and did lots of strengthening work and jumping rope. January brought a barely-qualifying 4:19 1500-meter race at the Dartmouth Relays (translates to about a 4:39 mile)—and February 7, there I was on the starting line with 10 other racers and 4000 people watching.
After a brief episode of imposter’s syndrome–Golly, ma, are those really television cameras?–I tried to focus on Norm Larson’s advice to get toward the front of the pack but not the very front. After some shuffling in the first lap, I settled into fifth and stayed close. I had seen some of the other guys’ recent times (4:23, 4:27) and so knew that when we hit the first 400 in 69 and the 800 in 2:19 that it was a tactical race–which gave me some hope of hanging on.
I picked off one guy somewhere in there and then moved into third heading into the last lap. As we approached the final turn I was right behind the two leaders and had a sudden strange hope–in the lactic acid fog–that I might actually be able to out-sprint them. I high-tailed it in an outside lane as we came around the corner and tried to keep my elbows high like Kevin McMahon had shown me in the winter track sessions at UVM.
I got past Kris Hartner from Illinois coming off the turn and then caught Massachusetts’s Jason Cakouros on the final stretch to break the tape first… Just about busted a lung, but, man, was that fun. Proud to be wearing the GMAA sweater.
The best race of the evening was Shalane Flanagan’s new American record in the 5000—she ran 14:47 obliterating the old record, but she lost to the Ethiopian Ejigu by 5/1000s of a second!
See you on the cinders,
Josh