Racing the Mile

(I wrote this in January 2008 after my first mile race of that indoor season. I was about to turn 50 and I had great ambitions for running a fast mile again. For some reason, I never finished the post... About two weeks after I ran that race I sustained an injury that pretty much wrecked the rest of that season and pretty much the rest of the year. Too bad! It would be a long time before I ran another competitive mile.)

I am nervous.

I am two-thirds through my pre-race routine, the familiar sequence of jogging, stretching, and drills designed to get me warmed up and ready to race, and I am surprised at the butterflies in my stomach. There is absolutely nothing at stake in the race I am about to run -- except my self esteem, I guess, and maybe that it is enough. This is a small, obscure meet and I am running the mile against a few ancient road runners (not a pair of spikes among them), I would not be concerned about the pace. The truth is that almost every time I step to the line to run a mile (and small meets are no exception), it is like I am stepping in front of a firing squad.

The obscure meet is the annual MIT Varsity vs. MIT Alumni meet, Saturday January 12. There are only five competitors in the Open mile run, and three of them just finished the mile racewalk and are doubling. The other "fast guy" says he wants to break 5:20.

The mile is my race. I have known it since I was 11 years old. That's when I read a short piece in Sports Illustrated about an 11-year-old boy who had set a record by running a mile in 5:04. I wanted to do that, too. (It took me until I was 14). I knew it when I was in junior high and the coach listed all the events, and after every one, he asked who thought they wanted to run it. Everyone else wanted to do the sprint races; I wanted to do the mile.

I thought of the mile as a long event, long enough to discourage the really fast kids with little endurance. When I started, it was the longest event available. Eventually, I came to think of it as a perfect balance between endurance and speed. To run it well, you had to train to your body with lots of fast running

I forgot how much I liked the mile for a while when I caught the marathon bug. For many years, my only competitive miles were in summer all-comers meets. When I hit 40, I re-discovered the "joys" of miling.

And now, a decade later and about to enter a new age group, I still want to be able to run a fast mile.

Run a fast mile... it sounds so easy. It all feels easy at first, especially if you can keep your mind from dwelling on how your early pace will lead you into greater and greater anaerobic distress.

I haven't raced a mile since March, and I know that I don't yet have the training to do the race justice. But even with training, the only true way to prepare to race a mile is to race a mile, or several, and then you start to figure it out again.

* * *

When the gun goes off, I go immediately to the front trying to figure out whether I am going too fast. The others are leaving me alone, and after the first 100 meters I know that I'm going to be doing this by myself. The first 200m is 37.

In an indoor mile especially, you have to start thinking right away: how did that FEEL? How much effort went into it? You get fooled, sometimes, the pace feeling so easy but too fast. In this case, it didn't feel easy. Although I know that 37 is not fast, I felt like I was laboring a bit around the flat turns. Still, if I start running slower now, I will settle into mediocrity too early. I work a little bit harder on the next lap and am rewarded with another 37.

The good thing is, I'm not nervous any more. The bad thing is that I don't know what's going to happen to me. The mile is short, but full of surprises.

Two more laps and I hit 800m in 2:30. For some reason, this makes me angry. Not even sub-5:00 pace! I start digging in, no longer trying to think of ways to avoid the discomfort. I run lap 5 in 37 again, and I hit 1200m in 3:43.

By now, I am lapping people, but other than a momentary sense that I am moving fast, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that this is an insignificant race against weak competition. I really need to run sub-5:00 and will put myself through quite a bit of hurt to do it.

But my legs seem to have forgotten how. Or perhaps that last 200 was unwise. I can feel my legs getting rubbery. It happens very quickly in a mile, and I know when I pass 1400m in 4:20 that despite my best efforts I am slowing down. From here on in, I put all my focus on not slowing down. I try to remember to maintain my form. I try to use my arms to make up for the rubbery feeling in my legs.

And then I'm on the final straight. And as time slides away, I sprint stiffly for the last 20 meters. It's not pretty.

When all is said and done, when I finally stop coughing the dreaded hack of the indoor middle-distance runner, I take home the only prize that matters, a time of 4:57.5 and renewed membership in the community of runners who just love racing the mile.