The last time I ran in a track meet was the spring of 2004. I don’t remember which race it was, and I certainly don’t remember ever thinking that it would be the last track meet I ever ran in (although at that point I was just trying to survive the track season, so I probably didn’t care either way). Since then, I’ve barely thought about track meets or the possibility that they might still be happening even though I’m not doing them. It turns out, track meets do still exist.
I officially learned this fact on Wednesday night, when my new friend Chris drove me up to University of Portland and I made my triumphant return to the Chiles center. When I was younger I went there every summer for basketball camp, but I rarely paid attention to the indoor track upstairs above the court, circling around the bleachers. Wednesday I headed up there and found about 50-ish people milling around, signing in and warming up for the races. Five dollars bought my way into all three races – the mile, the 150 meters, and the 800. I opted out of the 150 because honestly, that’s a stupid race that nobody has ever heard of, and more importantly, I don’t sprint.
The first race was the mile, which on the indoor track was close to seven laps. This was really confusing for me, because I had no idea what pace my splits signified, and it’s hard to keep track of what lap you’re on when there’s so many laps. Sometimes I get confused about this when there’s only 4 laps. I also had no idea how fast the girls I was running with would be, so I decided to just run in front of all of them the entire time. This ended up only working out for the first lap or so, and then a bunch of people decided to run in front of me instead. This meant that I didn’t win. I ran about the exact same time as I did for the mile run on Sunday, and also like Sunday, I’m positive my time would have been much faster if I hadn’t gone out so fast. Someday I’ll learn.
The men ran the mile right after us, in two heats. In the first (slower) heat, one girl was bringing up the rear by a lot, and Kathy Parker, a running coach from Lincoln, explained to me that she had missed the girls race by just a few seconds so jumped in on the guys race. She ended up finishing at least half a minute behind the last guy, and the announcer decided to broadcast the fact that she had missed her race to everyone there. I’m sure she appreciated that.
The 800 is a race that I haven’t run since my freshman year of high school… almost ten years. One girl asked me how fast I was, I told her I had no idea, and she told me that I “seemed pretty fast.” She had huge giant muscles so I wanted to return the compliment and tell her that she “seemed pretty strong,” but I wasn’t sure that would be relevant to the conversation. Anyway, I guess I ran the race medium fast – I don’t even remember what a good time for the 800 is. I also didn’t remember how hard it is, considering it’s the closest thing to a sprint that I ever do. Except the 400 I guess, but I never took that seriously. I’ll get to try it next week though, if I feel like it – the races happening then are the 3k, the 400, and the 1000. I believe that the 1000 is also a make-believe race that I’ve never heard of, but maybe I’ll run it anyway.
If you want to see my results, go here. I’m excited to go race again next week, but also nervous about the 3k. Especially on an indoor track, it’s going to be about 200 laps (give or take). The best part of these races is that there’s no prizes so I have no reason to be upset if I don’t get 1st place. If I ever do get 1st place I might change my mind about this one. Chris, who I went with, did get first place in the 800, and he didn’t even get angry or cry or anything about walking away prize-less.
Speaking of prizes, next on my list of things to do is to register for the Shamrock Run 15k so I can get another commemorative bottle-opener style medallion. I’ve been finding that one just isn’t enough.
Miles run in 2011: 50ish??
4 Comments
a 150m race? what is that? is it european?
i’m excited to learn that i ran a race and won! i keep so many secrets from myself.
Seven lap splits:
A 7-minute mile is 1 minute per lap. Each lap, note your seconds over or under a minute, multiply that by 7 to scale up to a mile, and take the sum or difference from 7.
Example: You run a lap in 1:10, ten seconds over a minute. 10 * 7 = 70 seconds. Add to 7 minutes: 8:10 mile equivalent.
I just now got around to reading this. Very smart, I wish I had thought about it like that two years ago.