Yippee! I did it. I finished the Congress Avenue Mile in 8:53. That is an all-time record for me (At least since, I was in high school — but I do not remember the details of my running times that far back.) That was a pace of eight minutes and fifty-two seconds per mile! That is below nine minutes; it has been ten minutes for so long. I wonder what it will take to get it down to an eight-minute mile. Lots of running, I am sure.
Today was a perfect day for a run. I woke up at 5:30 AM to get ready. I had decided to ride my bike the seven miles to the race start. So shortly after the sun had come up, I rode down to the start line. This year was a little different than in the past, when the race started at the capitol and went down the hill to the Colorado River. But this year there was some other event that prevented that, so we started on the south side of Congress Avenue,just over the bridge on the Colorado River, ran across the bridge to Cesar Chavez (formerly 1st Street), then turned east and ran one block to Brazos St. We turned and ran three blocks north to 4th street, then turned back west to get to Congress Avenue. Once on Congress Avenue, we headed back to the start/finish line across the bridge.
One of the problems with this scheme was since the same gate was being used for the start and finish, the officials could not start one group until most of the runners from the previous group had arrived. The group that I was supposed to start with was about 15 minutes late and so the officials joined my group with the next group. Therefore, I was supposed to run with the men and women 60+. Instead, I ran with the 40+ group. It was fine; both groups did not have that many people.
The actual race was really good. I did a lot to warm up. First, I rode my bike down to the start area and locked it up. Then, about 30 to 45 minutes before the race, I jogged for about half a mile.
The only problem was that I should try to get my heart rate up closer to my racing heart rate. Which for a race such as this is high. I only got it up to 130, and I think 140 would have been better. Then there was a lot of time between my warm-up run and the actual start of the race. It would probably be better to have the two closer.
At the start, I ran strongly, the same as everybody else, but about two hundred meters into the race my heart and lungs were telling me to slow down. Therefore, I had no choice but to obey. From that point on, I just tried to push as hard as I could, without pushing too hard. When we turned the final corner and started running down hill to the finish line I think I should have dug a little harder and recovered a little more time.
Here is the Garmin account of the race:
Here is the ride down to the start:
And here is the ride home: (Note that I did not start recording for some ways)
I made two stops on the way home. First I stopped at the Saturday-morning farmer’s market and bought a blueberry muffin. I was hoping to meet the group of riders from ACA who were doing the hosted ride. In particular, I was looking for Monte to ask if I could join their group and return to Mozart’s, but I never saw him.
The next stop was Mellow Johnny’s for a cup of coffee. From there I headed home. Well, I guess there was one more thing. Biking through the University of Texas was interesting. There were all sorts of people wearing graduation gowns showing their parents and friends around. The traffic was heavy getting though UT, so I was glad when I made it out of the campus.