KC Corporate Challenge 2012 -- A Wonderful Mile

To quote, as near as I can remember, Pippin from The Two Towers movie, I am, “sitting on a field of victory enjoying a few well-earned comforts,” taking my time with a large bowl of ice cream before getting serious again tomorrow about removing more of my unnecessary fat, the enemy of speed.  I won the corporate challenge 800 meter tonight in an OK time of 2:11.5, leading it from the gun to the tape.  Tonight’s race, however nice it was to win, was not the highlight of KCCC for me this year, but it was the one I lost on Tuesday.  The Mile.

Since I started racing again in April I have run some decent times that I have been very happy with considering my relative lack of training, a couple of barely sub-18 5ks and a 1:24 half marathon.  Oh, and I ran that 5:03 1600m for the company mile tryout a couple of weeks ago.  All of these were nice confidence boosters that I have been very happy with, but nothing that has really stood out dramatically.  The half marathon was a real brutal struggle for the last 5 miles when I felt like my lack of training really hurt me, but I was nevertheless able to hang tough and to my utter surprise take my co-worker and running buddy Troy in the last half mile of that race.  Troy and I see-saw back and forth against each other year in and year out, and in the half marathon the teeter-totter tipped in my favor.  Truthfully, he had burned the fuel too hot in the early miles and he was really used up by the end of the race.  In the mile though, I had no confidence at all that I would even have a remote chance to beat Troy.  On tryout day he had run a very solid 4:49 to my 5:03.  Fourteen seconds is an eternity in a mile race.   

Nevertheless, I pictured myself running sub-75 quarters and I wondered how much, if any, fitness lift I might have gained from racing the half marathon as well as from running 15 miles this past Saturday morning.  Why not give it a shot.  I resolved that I would do whatever it took to hang onto Troy through 1200 and let the chips fall where they may.  Sometimes in those scenarios where the chips fall is that place of deep oxygen debt and lactic acid buildup where you can barely move your legs, and that makes for a very long, slow, uncomfortable, unsatisfying and even humiliating last lap in front of one’s friends and co-workers.  I decided to risk it anyway.  There was no way of telling where I was really at in my running physiology without going to the limit.  If you don’t touch the limit, you don’t know where it is!

Troy and I lined up next to each other on the inside lane for the waterfall start 9 or 10 meters behind the “normal” starting line because this race would be a true mile, not a 1600.  When the gun went off I took off at what I felt was a rather leisurely pace, basically inviting Troy to go around me and take the lead.  He did not.  I led the race through a fairly slow first 200 meters and when I heard old Andy (my high school coach and the PA announcer) call the 38-second split I picked up the pace a bit.  Still, we came through the first 409 meters in a rather easy 76 seconds.  And then Troy took off.

So I thought, OK, here we go.  To me it felt like he was really surging and for a split second I doubted my ability to hang onto him, but my will was set beforehand and I clung to him for dear life.  We came through the second quarter in a much quicker 72 seconds and then he seemed to wilt at about the same time I felt like I was actually beginning to hit rhythm.  So the lead changed again. 

It felt like I was pushing hard into the third lap now, and as we passed through 1000 meters something happened.  Something wonderful.  Here I feared would be where I would start to feel my lack of conditioning and the beginning of my doom, but what I felt instead was completely different.  Oh, at this moment I did begin to feel the burning in my legs.  I could feel the lactic acid accumulating.  But!  Despite the increase in discomfort I also felt strangely like I could push through it.  I felt like “what it takes” was going to be there, and although it would certainly hurt before the end, I could handle it and I could race another 600 meters without descending completely into the pit of iron legs despair.  I think it was about then I first thought about winning it.

Although I was trying to push that third lap hard, it was nevertheless only a 74 (being the third lap, however, 74 feels like 70!), and that pesky D-1 runner from Tennessee was still hanging on.  He told me after the race that I *almost* dropped him back there, but my surge wasn’t quite enough.  We hit the gun lap with me still in the lead and determined to press my advantage even harder.  I gave it everything I had in an aerobic gear for the next 300 meters, but still he hung on.  I could feel him behind me and I started to kick with 100 meters to go.  So did he!  And then it was like one of those slow motion movie scenes.  I was running as fast as I could under the circumstances, but seemingly centimeter by centimeter Troy came even with me, and then he was just a shoulder ahead of me, and then maybe a meter, and then we crossed the line….  Ahh, so close.  0.35 seconds separated us.  I absolutely hate losing races that I could win, but it has been impossible to be disappointed with this one. 

In many ways, this was one of the most fun races I have run in many many years.  To duel a guy whom I like and respect for a full four minutes and fifty four seconds, was just pure joy.  This is what I love about running, about racing.  I feel like we pushed each other and pulled each other and challenged each other the whole way and in the final analysis it was the battle itself that was a victory for me.  In my mind I really had no business running a 4:54 mile this week.  As I have written before (quoting a friend of mine, actually), there are no flukes in this sport, and guys who are not 4:54 guys cannot run 4:54 miles.  Period.  Still, this race felt like a major breakthrough for me for where I am.  It tells me that I am progressing quickly in returning to the shape I was in many months ago before surgery, and it tells me that I probably yet have a lot of headroom for improvement since I have not really trained very hard.  I am more proud of this mile, even though it was a second place finish, than I am of several races that I have won.  Seeking my limit and finding that it was a lot further out there than I thought it was, losing a hard fought tactical battle to a respected opponent while giving it my all, taking risk and being bold, that feeling in the third lap when I knew I could race it the whole way – all of these things made this little race really special to me.  It was a dandy.