November 10, 2016
A special event at Chittick Field was posted for tonight, so I met Laura at the field so we could participate in the rare 2 mile event. It looks like most of the participants are high school students and they are breaking the race apart into heats based upon likely finishing time.
We aren’t put in the first race since that race is for students that are attending a dance and need to get going. Our race is the second race and it is Laura, me, a 9 year-old girl, and three high school freshman (probably the “slow” ones).
Two miles is an odd distance and given that I have a hard time pacing in a 5K, I will now have one fewer mile to figure out pacing here.
On the first lap, the three boys went out fast through the first turn, and my immediate thought was that I need to stay with them, but by the end of the first lap, I had not only stayed with them, but pulled ahead and put some distance between us (too fast!).
My goal now was to hold on (not accelerate) for as long as I could. Even if the boys caught up to me, I had still done well (as long as I didn’t have to stop and walk or fall over).
I came through my first mile in 6:55, but knew I could not maintain that pace for the final 4 laps. I had also noticed that 2 of the 3 boys had made up some of the initial gap I established in the first two laps. Must… hold… on.
Laura was just a bit behind me (well, behind the boys, but in no danger of being lapped). All of us had lapped the girl, but unless she was a star, it would be embarrassing if we didn’t lap her at least once.
My energy was flagging on that last lap. The nearest of the boys was coming on strong and blew by me in the final 100 yards, but it was close, as I came in 14:12. Laura was only 30 seconds back. (The little girl came in under 18 minutes.)
The timer/LB Poly coach said to me that he couldn’t believe I had a sub-7 mile in me (my PR is 5:56 and all of my half marathon on down PRs are at sub-7 pace). I smiled and hoped that he meant, “at age 45,” rather than he couldn’t believe I could break 7 minutes.
Laura got a trucker cap for her time or something about winning her age group (but honestly, we were the only Masters there).
We stayed and watched the other heats. The best was the final one where they had a ringer (I think the only other one over 21.) who came through (by a bunch) under 10 minutes. Fast! (I wonder how he would do in a trail 50K…)