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.
| Time (and pace) | overall place | division place (M 40-44) |
|---|---|---|
| 7:57 | 456 / 1162 | 40 / 79 |
