Fitness Games

Just coming off a great performance at the Bronx 10 miles, I had my next race just 6 days later, The Mind Body and Spirit Fitness Games.  I was a 4 mile race in Central Park.  With my confidence built up from the last race, I set out to break my NYRR race pace.  It was currently 6:41 minute/mile which I set when I did the Wall Street run. The last time I tried to break it, I had a horrible race and came in at 6:45.  Conditions were great again and I was feeling good.  I took off running and keep a nice steady fast pace.  Once again, I started to see some Front Runners ahead of me and my goal was to pass them one at a time.  There was one Front Runner just a couple of hundred feet a head of me.  Every time I caught up to him, he would pass me again.  I was right on his heels most of the race.  So at 3.5 miles I was caught up and even with him.  I wasn't even sure if I was on his radar, or if this was a one way battle.  I decided to push a little and get a head of him.  I thought I had beat him, but then 400 feet from the finish, here he comes sprinting by me.  When I saw him over my right shoulder I said, "No, don't do it" and that fueled his fire even more and he breezed right by me.  So he ended up ahead of me, but I was pretty sure that I beat my pace, so I was still pleased.  I just needed to wait for the official results.  Later that afternoon when I saw the official times, I had killed my old pace.  So my new NYRR pace is 6:28 minutes/mile.  I decided to see where I fell in the Front Runner list. Was I second right behind that guy?  or were there even more ahead of us?  The funny thing about races with large amounts of people, is that you don't all start at the same time.  You official time starts when you cross the start line (each racer had a "D tag" on his shoe, to electronically time your race).  So if you are further back in the crowd, a couple of minutes can go by before you even start the race.  It just so happened that the speed demon that passed me right at the end also started the race a good deal ahead of me.  So when you compare official time it took to run the course, I had run it faster than him.  I must have started behind him and caught up.  So it ended up I was the 1st place Front Runner.  Making the NYFR gram 2 times in a row!!  It was another good race!   


Time: 8 am
Distance: 4 miles
Time: 25:51 minutes
Music: shuffle