Well, for the second straight Sunday, I set a personal record in a race, yet walked away knowing that I could have done much better. Today’s was at the Fifth Avenue Mile, only the second time I’ve ever run a mile-long road race. (So, the P.R. wasn’t that big of a deal.)
Even though I went to sleep last night before 11:00, I just could not get myself out of bed this morning when my alarm went off. Luckily, I had a second alarm set for an hour later, just in case. Still, I didn’t get out of bed until almost nine o’clock — the time that I was supposed to be leaving for the race. I finally walked out the front door about 9:20 (after hurried stretching and breakfast) and then ran (literally) 2.5 miles down to the starting line at 80th & Fifth. I couldn’t find the baggage check when I got there — they were using buses and the one for my age group had already left because I was late — and by the time I found out where I could leave my bag, I had just enough time to make it to the back of the mob of people waiting at the starting line.
They sounded the buzzer, but it was over 6 seconds before I even crossed the starting line. Even then, I was still in heavy traffic and not able to run. The crowd finally started to thin a bit after the quarter mile marker, but I kept dodging people the entire race. I crossed the finish line at 5:31, which gave me a net time of 5:25. But, for some reason, they weren’t calculating the net times today — just the actual times. I have no idea why this was, but it seems weird to me — those extra seconds at the beginning are even more important on such a short race than they are on longer ones.
Well, no matter which time you choose to go with, I beat my old P.R. of 5:37, which I suppose is something I should be happy about. But, instead, I’m just left wondering how fast I could have run today if it wasn’t for the pre-race difficulties. And, even more intriguing is this question: How fast could I have run if I didn’t do the 21 miler yesterday? Could I break a five-minute-mile? 4:50? 4:40?