A virtual race by reddit’s /r/running. Time trial against people all over the world.

Lead-up

Months

I got injured at the end of May in my build-up to the Brussels 20k. I ended up running the race (1h30m41s), but realising that might not have been the best of ideas. Doctor diagnosed knee bursitis and told me to rest it for a week, but a week became two weeks and eventually I did not really start running again till mid July. Since then I’ve begun very slowly building up again, but it will take a while until I am back at pre-injury comfort I imagine.

Weeks

Growing my weekly distance has been slow as I remain cautious, perhaps overly so. This is a bit frustrating, but rather little running than no running. Currently at about 120 minutes of running per week spread over three days (~22km at current pace). None of those involve speed workouts though, so I have not done anything speed wise since May.

Days

Bought new shorts yesterday. First proper ones, with the mesh inside and all that.

Hours

Nothing too special in the morning. Knees felt mostly OK. Went out and did about 1.6km as warmup.

Race info

  • Location: King Baudouin park, Brussels, Belgium. (I have no track at my disposal)
  • Start time: 10:00 on 2015-08-27.
  • Weather: A nice 16C with a hint of rain in the air

The Race

I was not quite sure what to expect for two reasons. First, I have never run a mile for the purpose of running a mile because it is a silly non-metric distance that I do not pay attention to. Second, due to the injury mentioned above I had no clue what to expect from my body. I “took part” in the MEB last month in that I simply submitted one I ran during regular training.

First 400 metre. This is actually a deceiving 400 metre because the uphill of several metres is not shown on your average runkeeper/strava/… site. The reason is that there is a bridge taking you over a busy road, but the elevation data is from the road, not the bridge. This was therefore the hilliest part of the race despite not showing on the map. This part was supposedly done at about 4m42s/km, but the GPS data for the first 100 metre looks suspiciously slow. I guess this may have affected my overall time as well. Oh well.

Second 400 metre. The flattest part of this mile, I believe, but also the trickiest in terms of the road. This is more of a trail. At some point in the past it seems they made an effort to keep it together with cement or somesuch, but it has eroded, angled, and is just all around dangerous. I pass by it often though, so know my way around. I kept up the pace and was still feeling pretty good. About 3m45s/km for this part.

Third 400 metre. There are two reasons I did not like it and both occurred at the halfway mark. The first one was passing the 1km mark which tends to be the moment I stop when I tested my sprint speed in the past. The second one was that right at the 1km mark some minor elevation starts which did not feel very nice at all. I pushed on, but it was getting harder. Pace at 4m13s/km.

Last 400 metre (and then some). There’s a cemented road again at this point (well, there’s a cobbled road with a small cemented stretch that I think they put there for cyclists and which I happily make use of) and it somewhat flattens out again as well as even a minor downhill to make up for the earlier uphill. I was pushing on and 50 metre into this one, I noticed there were threads of spit hanging out of my mouth. I ignored them of course, not to be distracted. Up ahead I saw another jogger heading the opposite way and also running on the cemented part of the road. She saw me coming though and moved out of the way. I do not know if she was being friendly or if she was just scared of some guy with spit hanging out his mouth racing towards her, but I will take it. I’m afraid I was not quite capable to thank her though. In the final stretch I tried to push out anything I had left in the tank, helped by it being going ever so slightly downhill. Final 400 metre at 3m27s/km.

Results

Drum roll.

6 minutes 8 seconds. Damn, guess I was hoping to break 6 minutes at least. Maybe another month. Maybe on an actual track then.