Full Circle

Photo Courtesy of Allison Wade

This time last year, I had just returned from watching the 2006 Boston Indoor Games. My name was in the program, but I wasn't on the track, as I was sidelined with an as-yet-undiagnosed knee injury that turned out to be a torn meniscus. After a long rehab and retraining period, much of which has been written about here, last night I returned as a participant to the 2007 edition of the Reebok Boston meet.

The sequence of races that got me to masters' mile in the meet, which has a nominal qualifying time of 4:40, were as follows:

12/30/06. First post-injury run on an indoor track. Mile race at Boston University. 4:42.48. Quite a surprise - only a second slower than my last pre-injury race.

1/5/07. Dartmouth relays. Masters 1500m, 4:27.9. Roughly a 4:50 mile equivalent. Trend is in the wrong direction here. Blame it on a cold and a crowded track. Highlight - won my age-group and a Dartmouth beer glass.

1/13/07. Tufts collegiate meet. 4:49. Ugh. Thought I was over the cold, but just felt horrible from the mid point onwards. Highlight - beat all but 2 guys in my race, all of whom were less than half my age. Small comfort.

1/21/07. GBTC Invitational. Last chance. 4:39.65!! Not only fast enough to get me into Reebok, but also my best time in 4 years. Guess those new spikes were worth the money.

Which brings us to last night. Having had two really horrible races in the last month, I tried as much as possible to duplicate the conditions that had prevailed before the two good races. Unfortunately, both the good races came on the heels of trips to California and I wasn't about to go to those lengths. So I just tried to eat a lot of fish, something that I seem to do when I travel. (Non-runners probably will wonder what is going on here but I imagine many runners nodding and saying "I can see myself doing that".)

The Reebook meet was a sell-out crowd (a couple of thousand) and even at 5:25pm, when the masters mile goes off as the first race, there have to be over a thousand people watching. Fortunately only 10 of them know me.
I set myself three goals, in order (a) don't blow up embarrassingly; (b) try to beat at least one person (c) try to improve on last week's time. These are not strictly compatible goals - (a) and (b) require a more conservative race than (c). And with 1996 Olympian Mark Coogan in the field - a man with a 3:58 PR - there is also the risk that trying to just stay in the pack for a few laps will result in a failure to meet goal (a).

As luck would have it, the race unfolded very nicely from my point of view. Even though I probably ran my fastest 200m of the year (32.x) to stay in the pack for the first lap, it all felt pretty comfortable, and by midway I was moving ahead of a few runners who have historically finished ahead of me. By the bell I had moved into 6th place, and while no-one would describe me as having a good kick, my last lap was good enough to hold off all but one of the closing runners, leaving my in 7th (out of 11) and a time of 4:38.1. My best time in over 4 years, and only 5 seconds off my all-time best. All three goals accomplished. Mark Coogan, meanwhile, ran away from the field to win in 4:24.7. He also kindly passed on to me the Reebok shirt that he received, as it conflicted with his New Balance sponsorship.

More photos of the race can be found here and here - I'll post some of my favorites in the coming weeks.

The rest of the meet was outstanding. A new women's world record in the 5k, American record in women's 3k, and three Australian indoor records. The last point raises the interesting question of how often Australians get a chance to tackle indoor records, given the total absence of indoor tracks from the island continent. I wonder what the Australian masters indoor mile record is?

There were no egregious musical choices, in contrast to last year (unless you count a brief clip of Queen's "We Will Rock You", which is more of a sports cliche than a real running one).
In honor (sic) of all those Aussie records, I'll repost the "Waltzing Matilda in the Style of Eminem" from an earlier post.

Scared Little Weird Guys - Cleaning Out My Tuckerbag