BU Mini Meet #3

Track!

Last Saturday, at age 20, I ran the first indoor track meet of my life.  I never ran indoor track during high school and have never competed in this way before now.  Indoor racing fits well into my winter training for the Boston Marathon.  I am in the first phase of my build-up, which includes a speed portion while building the mileage back up.  The volume for workouts is a little less than marathon training but the speeds are much faster.  My workouts have included mile repeats, 800s and 400s.  I have been trying to run these distances faster on workout days and believe this will help lower my 5k time.  I targeted two races at the BU Mini Meet: the 3k and the mile.  The 3k is a little less than a 2 mile race and I wanted a chance to run a time that would put me under 17:00 5k pace on the indoor track.  This race would help me lock into this pace.  The mile has always intrigued me.  I have never run an all out mile.  I have been curious as to what I would be able to run if I ran just one little mile as fast as I could.  Logistically, the track meet seemed straightforward.  I would run the 3k first and aim for something close to 9:45.  Then, I would double back and run an all out mile and try to break 5:00.  My training would suggest these times were attainable but I still have a lot to learn on the indoor scene.

I arrived to Boston a little later then I would have liked.  There was a long line of runners picking up their numbers that took me a while to go through.  Right away, I noticed that the runners in line varied in age from people who looked too young to be running in the first place, to college kids, to grizzled veterans of the sport.  This was an open meet, where you were placed in your heats according to time.  Age made no difference.  After finally getting my number it had reached 10:00 A.M.  This is when the first heat of the 3k went off.  I was in the third heat.  This did not give me a whole lot of time to warm up for the race.  I rushed off to the track and began my warm-up on the loop that circles the outside of the track.  It is not part of the actual track.  After about a mile, the first heat of the 3k was already finished and the second was about to begin.  I did some light stretching and drills.  Before I knew it, I was standing on the start line.  I had my new track spikes on and was feeling quite nervous.  I had no idea what to expect when the gun went off.  The start was quick.  We went through the first 200m in probably :36-37 seconds.  This put the pace under 5:00.  At this point, however, I felt comfortable, and was right in the middle of the pack.  I made a mistake here.  I raced during the first 800m of a 3k race.  Instead of settling into a pace comfortable for me, I surged ahead of a few runners during the opening laps and battled with them for position.  I went through the mile in about 5:15, it might have been a couple seconds faster or slower.  This was right on target, being right on the pace I wanted to hold.  At this point, however, the wheels started to fall off.  The pace of the opening laps began to catch up to me.  Each lap got progressively slower.  I seemed to be getting passed by a couple runners with each subsequent lap.  On my second to last lap, I was passed right at the end by the leader.  She ended up running close to 9:25, securing a US indoor standard for the IndoorTrack and Field Championships later this year.  I finished in 10:20.  This was way off of my original goal.  It comes out to 5:30 pace, which means I was struggling to hold 5:45 pace during the final laps.  I acted like the rookie I was during this race.  I went out too fast, and it killed my time.  If I had run consistent laps, I could have run at the very least under 10:00.  10:20 seems a long way from that and I do not like seeing my name next to that time.  When will I learn?

(BU Mini Meet)

Not only was this the first indoor track meet I have ever run, but I signed up for two races.  I had about two hours in between races.  This put me in a position I had never been in before.  I needed to recover from the first race and prepare for the second.  I surprisingly did a decent job at this.  After the first race, I went outside to do my cool-down.  The fresh air gave me a little break from the dry air indoors.  After the cool-down, I simply watched some of the 400m races and early mile races.  I was in the 9th heat for the mile and had some time to wait.  I drank a lot of fluids, as I could not get the dry feeling out of my mouth.   I had half of a cliff bar, hoping the calories would do me some good.  After the first couple mile heats, I went down to the outside track to warm-up again.  This time, I got in a full two miles and then used my remaining time stretching and doing some light drills.  I threw in a few striders and felt alright going into my heat.  I knew my mile time goal was probably not in play because of the hard effort I had put on my legs with the previous race.  I also was assigned bib #12 of 12, which meant I was seeded last going into the race.  If, for example, another runner had shown up to the meet with a faster pr than me, I would have been moved into the next heat and would have been the fastest runner there.  When the gun went off, I decided to run a smarter race and simply try to run consistently.  I allowed myself to fall into last place, running right off of the person in front of me.  I never tried to move up in position during this race.  I went through halfway in 2:32-33 and finished in 5:11 without any sort of kick.  I was not as disappointed with this race because of the cumulative effort of the day.  I think that I could have broken 5:00 if I had been fresh going into the race.  I learned several tough lessons on this day, the first being that running track hurts.  You feel pain and stress not only in your legs, but in your upper body too.  You have to be mentally and physically strong to run well.  I do not think I had either of these two things going into the races.  My body was tired, running these races in an 80 mile week with no taper.  Mentally, I let the nerves get the best of me.  I got intimidated and then had no response when the running felt uneasy.  I also learned that I should probably keep my focus on one race if I want to hit time goals.  Overall, I had a lot of fun at the meet.  It was a new experience for me.  I talked with a few new runners, many of whom approached me because I was wearing my Rhode Runner singlet.  I hope to use these races as a good base moving forward.  It should not be too difficult to set indoor pr's after performances I am not so satisfied with.  I am excited to run more indoor races this winter and hope to really see the gains in the spring!

Keep working,
David