I ran the Fifth Avenue Mile a few years back. Doing the 9+1 program with NYRR that year (completing 9 NYRR races in a calendar year + 1 volunteer race guarantees entry into NYC Marathon the following year) pushed me outside my comfort zone. I raced a lot more on all sorts of distances I wouldn’t normally attempt.
Especially the mile.
When you think about it, a mile is really as close to an all-out playground chase-race as any of us grownups are likely to get. What’s better than that?
On Fifth Ave, the course covers about 20 blocks, from the Met down to 60th. Five blocks per quarter-mile. No problem, right?
Oh brother, plenty of problems.
First quarter-mile: Easy breezy. Slight downhill. Me and the rest of the 50+ crowd are the first heat of the day, just after wheelchair division. I’m near the front of the corrall and go out fast. Am keeping pace with everyone around me. Then I start to realize I am going too fast. I don’t think W. B. Yeats was a runner but a scrap of his scribblings flashed through my brain: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
Second quarter-mile: Oof. Why is there an uphill in front of me? Who knew there is a giant mountain on Fifth Avenue of all places? Yep, needing to downshift to get up this cliff and recover my breath.
There’s a clock there on the sidewalk flashing the split but my head is too occupied for doing the usual math stuff I do during longer, slower races to pass the time. This is a half-mile race, right? Should be over in a sec.
Third quarter-mile: Over the peak of the hill and back to a mild downhill. Am I getting passed or passing anybody? Couldn’t tell you. Wait a second, that looks like the finish line ahead, but it’s still so. far. yonder. Torture! Pain! Suffering!
Somebody from the sidewalk hollers, “Go, dude!” So go this dude does.
Final quarter-mile: The finishing chute is so close, yet so far away.
This third quarter has me feeling I am done for, that I am just going to throttle back to a Sunday stroll and lollygag it in. But the sight of that glorious finish puts some spark in my step. Yes, I did get passed but now I find an extra gear and start passing a few and running it in hard across the finishing mat.
Thank goodness it’s over. I want to vomit. I want to weep. I want to lie down and have someone take care of me.
And, strangely, walking around the corner and into the park for a slooooow recovery jog with the other tired racers back up to the start to get my bag, I already am feeling I want to do it again.
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