white noise

For this year’s Flying Pig I decided it was time to move up from the 10k to the 4-person marathon relay. The 10k is still very much a challenge, but I really wanted a taste of Sunday’s main events. So with Mark, and Justin and his friend Matt, we assembled a relay team.

Each leg of the relay is a different length – ranging from around 6 miles to over 7.5 – but they also vary a lot in topology. I decided to take the longest leg, but in return it’s also the flatest. Justin took the first leg and had to contend with the bridges and downtown streets. Matt took the second leg and the hills of Eden Park. Then after me, Mark took the last leg back into the city for the finish.

The logistics of running the relay kinda suck. Everyone gets downtown prior to the very early 6:30 start and (everyone but the first runner) hops on a shuttle bus corresponding to their leg. You’re then bussed several miles out, and dropped off where you wait, outside in the chilly morning, until your teammate comes running up. It ends up being a lot of waiting around, but it is really awesome running (part of) the marathon course lined with all the spectators. The run went great. It was the longest I’d run in a race, but I was really happy I kept close to a 9:30 pace. I also ran out in the last quarter mile and joined Mark for the very end. And while our total team time wasn’t amazing, it was very cool we covered the full 26.2 between the four of us.

The Flying Pig weekend kicked off Friday night with the second race of the Christian Moerlein Beer Series, the Little King’s Mile. It’s a short straight line shot from the north edge of downtown to the stadium area on the river. There’s a rise or two along the way, but for the most part it’s decidedly downhill. All in all, it’s a fun and super easy dash before the more serious events of the weekend.

I never run just a mile, so I didn’t really have any expectations for my time. Generally a fast mile for me at any distance is around 9 minutes, so I thought if I beat that for a single mile I’d be doing well. With my longer training runs lately I’ve found I’m fairly tired for the first mile or two and I get into a better rhythm into mile 3 or 4. So I knew I’d have to start loose and really push myself out of my normal comfort zone. On the other hand, I didn’t want to go too overboard and end up hurting for the long relay on Sunday.

Being such a short distance, the race was setup in heats, with each corral setting off 10 minutes after the previous. The run went really, really well. A mile is a funny distance – too much to sprint, but short enough to definitely push faster than normal race pace. Instead of breaking my goal of 9 minutes, I was shocked to see I beat the 8 minute mark. Yeah that’s still pretty slow by any standard measure, but it has set a seriously challenging 1-mile PR for myself going forward.