Ravesnscraig Park Mile or "Breaking the Four Hour Mile"

I said that I wasn’t going to allow myself to get sucked into the Hunters Bog Trotter’s ‘GP’ madness, that I would just run some races, record them appropriately, and then just see what happens.  That sensible approach was tested yesterday when I found myself driving to Kirkcaldy to run one mile.  I had a bit of a wobble at 5pm as I was preparing to go, when I stopped and thought, “what am I doing?!” but Kata was the angel (or devil?) voice of my conscience and gave me the extra incentive by declaring that if I went then she would run the race as well. Who am I to deprive a girl of a Tuesday night in Kirkcaldy, so off we went. 

Ravenscraig Park Mile Route

We left at 17:30 and negotiated the rush hour traffic over the Forth Road Bridge, arriving at about 18:20 in plenty of time for the race start at 19:00.  A small bunch of dedicated runners (including Ivor and Martin from HBT) had assembled ready to run one lap of Ravenscraig Park as quickly as possible.  I was really quite nervous before the race started as I had no idea what to expect at all.  Running a short distance very fast is unnatural and I had no plan in place or experience to fall back on.   

Kata appears to be sand dancing over the line

We got underway to the sound of an air horn and this is my race report…

I ran quite quickly at first, sped up going downhill, on the back straight at about the 800m mark I was slow and struggling for breath, we ran uphill for about 50m which didn’t help my speed, I sprinted as fast as my lungs would allow for the last 400m and then it was over in 6mins and 12 seconds (TBC).  

It was a personal best by 5 seconds and any PB is a good PB, so I’ll take it.  I was hoping for sub 6 mins but I am not a mile runner and my previous PB was 6:17 so I have no idea where I thought I would make up that time.  When I did the arithmetic (before the race) I realised I would have to be running just under 3:45/km pace for only 1.6km to achieve a sub 6 minute time so I

thought it might be possible.  It wasn’t. And I wasn’t even close.

Yeah that's right, I'm number 47.  Check it out. 

By many orders of magnitude, writing this blog update has taken longer than running the actual race, so I’ll just say “thanks” to Ivor for supplying the bonus point beer, “thanks to Kata for driving home after I drank that beer”, “thanks to Fife AC for a fun event”.

We arrived home (via the chip shop) at 21:20, thereby breaking the 4 hour mile.