Thursday Night at the Races

I was handed a big fat ego check again today. I finished dead last in a race tonight and was lapped by the winner twice in the process. You know how there’s always that one guy way, way behind the pack that everyone feels sorry for when you watch track meets on t.v.? Yeah, I was that guy. It was horrible.

I headed up to the Armory Track in Washington Heights with hopes of running a sub-5-minute mile and quickly crossing one of the goals for 2009 off the list. That was being a little too optimistic. As soon as we all lined up out in the center of the track, I knew that these guys were in a totally different league than me. They all had track shoes, fancy race team singlets, etc. I was out there in my road running shoes and an old race t-shirt. They sorted us out by predicted start time and I ended up in the fourth of eight heats. Waiting for the race to start was super nerve racking — I was actually real worried that I was going to throw up right there. Thank God I didn’t.

The gun fired and we were off. The first turn was horribly chaotic. I ended up in the back of the pack even though I had sprinted off the starting line. We were all clumped together so tightly and I was kicked several times. Then, coming out onto the straight-away, someone tripped and I had to hurtle over him to keep from falling myself. It was very intense. The next few laps (The Armory is an eighth of a mile indoor track) were fairly uneventful. I just kept getting thirstier and really light headed. I hit the halfway point on pace, just under 2:30, but things quickly fell apart after that. My lungs started to burn and my head got so foggy (I don’t know how better to describe it). I don’t really even remember much of this — it was almost like I just shifted into auto-pilot. The last lap finally came and I sprinted ahead of one guy coming down the final stretch to avoid coming in last (other than the guy who had fallen). But, that was little consolation for seeing 5:22 on the race clock and knowing I’d missed my goal by so much. My official time was 5 minutes, 22.2 seconds.

I was so bummed out from that that I decided to wait around for the 2 Mile race and see if I could put together a better run. It ended up being about two hours after the first race, which was plenty of time to cool down, but my lungs still felt like they were on fire. Many people had left by this time and so they divided us into two big heats. I was the 13th and final man on the fast heat. And, I was in 13th place the entire race. It wasn’t even close. I won’t go into details because there wasn’t anything too exciting. I ran the first mile in 5:33 and finished in 11:32 for a pace of 5:46 per mile. (I haven’t gotten the official time yet — it wasn’t posted when I left). It was very painful, but actually not as bad as the mile.

Finishing dead last really hurt though. I know I should have just focused on the clock, but that’s impossible to do. When you’re out running a race, it is a competition and of course you want to win. Giving your all and still coming in last is very disheartening, to say the least.

Anyway, let me end this with a bit of a positive twist so you don’t think I’m a glass-half-empty type of guy. I did set two personal records today. The mile was slightly better than what I did on 5th Avenue back in September and this was my first ever 2 Mile race, so it was a P.R. by default.

I’ll be back at the Armory for Round 2 on February 12th and will hopefully have some better news to report then.

p.s. I found out earlier today that I’m not accepted for the Empire State Building Run Up. That’s probably for the best (since I’m not at all ready to run up 86 flights of stairs), but it still sucks. I wanted to be able to say that I’d done that.