I haven’t made it a secret that I’ve made a solid effort to shy away from doing many New York Road Runners (NYRR) races now that I don’t intend to do the 9+1 New York City Marathon qualifying program another time. In recent years, those races have become too crowded, too expensive, and frankly much less enjoyable. The spring off-season that came between the NYC Half and Chicago Marathon training seemed like the perfect opportunity to test out a few no-pressure alternatives that would take me back to my roots: a trail 10K hosted by the Van Cortlandt Track Club (first cross-country race since high school XC—man, this was tough!), and a couple of track meets. Yes, in my mind I thought a couple of months full of easy, speedwork-free miles were the prime season for going back to track racing. Go with it.
In the lead! Kidding. I was just glad to successfully navigate this thing without tripping and falling down the mountain.
I was initially skeptical of registering for North Brooklyn Runners’s McCarren Park Track Classic because it was scheduled on a Friday night. Not only do I rarely run at night, I figured I’d be exhausted at the end of the workweek. But after signing up for the Dashing Whippets Track Meet slated to be a month after NBR’s, I figured I could set the bar low for the mile at McCarren and then try to beat it a few weeks later.
I’d predicted a track mile finish time of 6:45, based on the fact that I used to race the 1500 in ~6:15 in high school and I knew I couldn’t expect to match my road mile PR of 6:25. However, race night arrived, and boy was it windy. It was also quite chilly—I felt like such a wuss racing on the track in long sleeves, but they were absolutely necessary! Given the wind resistance in each lap and my utter lack of speed training, I just set my Garmin to lap at every 400m and made an effort to be consistent. My splits were all in the 1:42-1:44 range, and I finished in 6:57. Boom.
I love this photo. PPTC showing NBR what’s what!
I declined any invitations to join a relay team at McCarren, mostly out of fear of not being coordinated enough to sprint without screwing up a baton hand off, having never done a track relay in my life. Plus, by the time the relays rolled around, I was freezing and not about to de-layer again after the mile was over. But after watching from the sidelines, I figured the 4×400 could be a fun experiment for this distance runner and set about recruiting some fellow PPTC ladies to race it at the Whippets meet.
Gearing up for our 4×4 debut!
But first, the mile, take two! Like I said, I’d initially hoped to hit 6:45 at McCarren and get this one closer to my road time, but yet again, I hadn’t done speed training, and it was a delightful 80 degrees for this 11:00 A.M. event. Again, I set my watch to beep for every 400 and hoped to just run smart and ideally match my McCarren time. When the gun went off, everyone shot ahead, and I had a momentarily panicked flashback to often finishing dead last at high school track meets (you know, when a 6ish mile pace was good enough for dead last. I competed with some major fasties back then). From the very back of the pack, I shot glances at my watch and saw paces jumping from 6:15-6:20. It seemed counterintuitive, but I knew I had to pull back even more. For the first 800 meters, I made no effort to speed up, but the gap between myself and my teammates Gabby and Colleen was closing, and just after two laps, I made my move and picked it up for the second half. Little did I know, Colleen was hot on my heels in that last 400, and I just barely edged her out with our respective 6:46.2 and 6:46.5 finish times. Had I known she was there, I just may have tried to kick it in even more. I’ve decided it’s an eventual goal of mine to be able to run a mile faster than I used to run 1500 meters in high school (i.e., a sub-6:15 mile). I’m not quite there yet, but never say never—we’ll see what I can throw down at the 5th Avenue Mile in September.
And we’re off!
Reeling them in . . .
One mile run and done.
Onward to the main event of the morning (er, the afternoon, by then): the 4×400! I’d thought, based on our speed levels, that our runner order should be Gabby, Karla, myself, and Colleen, but Colleen was nervous about being the anchor, and since this was all my idea, I stepped up. (I guess it was where I belonged after my .3-second mile victory, anyway!) With a half hour to go, we decided maybe some baton hand-off practice with an empty water bottle would do us some good (sadly, we have no photographic evidence of this). Then we almost missed the relay itself! Yeah, that happened. It turned out we were the only all-female team participating and would therefore run with the men and mixed teams, but this information was not relayed (ha) to us by the organizers. Luckily Gabby and Colleen checked in and got us all back to the track just in time.
Colleen’s just out for a cheerful sub-6-paced stroll around the oval, NBD.
Our finish time was 5:52, with an average 400 pace of 1:28. I can’t be sure what exactly mine was, since I prematurely started my watch before receiving the baton, but it clocked my 400 at 1:25/5:40 pace. Quite possibly the fastest I’ve ever run before! As an added bonus, since we were the only women’s team, that made us the winning women’s team, so the Brooklyn Running Company sent us home with some sweet Nike earbands and hats.
As we departed the track and headed to a hard-earned brunch, I mentally noted how springy my legs felt, like I hadn’t raced at all. HA. When I got up from my post-race nap several hours later, my entire lower body was sore and creaky from those 1.25 miles. It was bad enough for me to pull out my TriggerPoint foam roller for the first time in maybe a year (yeah, yeah, I’m the worst about this, I know).
All in all, a trip back to the track wasn’t the worst way to close out the off-season and gear up for Chicago Marathon training. Thanks to that 6:46 mile and my recent 5K PR, I’m feeling more than ready to jump back into tempo runs and interval workouts to see what I’m made of.
