Taking On the Fleet Feet Four Miler: 6-9-11

The four mile Fleet Feet course has been kicking the crap out of me since the heat went all nuts-o on us.  But, with the Komen Race for the Cure 5k in less than two days, I needed to prove something to myself by running this course well before the race.  Therefore I went to the Fleet feet social run with the idea that I would handle this course.  Also, I knew that this would be the last run of my first year of running.  Last year's Komen was my first race of any kind, and it awakened my passion for running.  So, I sort of had the idea that I wanted to finish my first year running with a good effort.

 The high for the day was once again in the mid 90's and well into the range that makes me crazy.  But, by 6pm the heat had noticeably dipped, so that once our run began it wasn't as wretched as it has been in recent evenings.   I started the run out fairly well and my goal was to run about a minute off of my race pace, which I thought would be in the mid 8 min mile range.  The Komen course runs right through my neighborhood, which makes my very familiar with hilly nature of the course, so staying in the 8 min mile range will be a challenge for me.  I decided that for the social run that a pace somewhere in the 9 min. mile range would do just fine for the first 3 miles and that I would take whatever I got from the last mile, which concludes with a hill that has been killing me for weeks now.

The first three miles were uneventful.  I ran them strong and was able to stay in the time range I wanted.  But, no matter how well I was running the prospect of that last hill just loomed over me for the entire run.  I tried to tell myself that I have run this hill successfully more times than it has gotten the better of me.  But the memories of my last two failures wouldn't fade and all I could do was dread that hill.  When I finally turned onto the last mile, I was in attack mode and just went after the hill.  I stopped looking back for the other runners, and just focused upon pushing my way up the hill.  I broke it down in section in my mind and tried not to focus on the whole thing.  I didn't allow myself to look too far ahead, and section by section I steadily progressed up the hill.  When I got to the top of the hill I was out of a little more out of breath than I wanted to be and my legs were a little more sore than they needed to be with a race less than 48 hours away, but after taking on that hill, my mind was relived and that made it well worth it.And in honor of that -- I leave you with the greatest music video ever made.


I did 4 Miles in 39:11.19 for a pace of 9:48

1 9:14.47
2 9:29.14
3 9:37.14
4 10:50.34