A (Mini) 5th Avenue Mile Race Report

It's been a busy last few days both running and otherwise so I'm just now getting around to posting about my weekend. Oh well, better late than never!

This past Saturday was NYRR's 5th Avenue Mile, one of my favorite annual races. It's fun because you get to watch all of your friends race down one of the most iconic streets in the world, but I also usually dread it because speed isn't my strong suit and I usually finish with a case of dry-heaving.

Although marathon training means I haven't been able to do too much extra short speedwork this year, I did two Friday Night Miles with the Metro Milers in preparation. I also did the Montpelier Mile, a road mile, back in July. These various races got me mentally prepared so that when I toed the line on Saturday, I wasn't nearly as nervous as usual.

A mile is a little too short for me to have much to report but I'll say that I felt much stronger than in years past. My only goal was to break my time from  last year and my current PR, 5:20. I succeeded and managed a 5:18. Two seconds may not sound like a ton, but I was pretty happy. Even better, many of my teammates had awesome times and our men's team managed to place 5th overall!

Although some day I hope to be able to devote more time to this race, for now it's more of a test than a goal. It felt great to have run faster than last year considering I haven't set a single other PR in 2012. I know we all have ups and downs in our running life so I'm counting this as a nice up.