Team mate Steve McLean and myself were the lead hares at the Southport Waterloo A/C's one mile school races. The club puts on the races every year for the local school children.
Steve and myself started about 100 m in front of each race, it was kind of scary having a hundred kids charge straight at you, at full speed, I don't think the youngsters had heard of 'negative' splits.
Thankfully they started to slow down after the first 1/4 of a mile, but their split times show that setting off too fast never pays off!
The first race went by in about 6.29 and each race got progressively quicker as the age groups went up.
In the 7th race a 14 year old girl from the club won in 5.36 which seemed fast to my post marathon legs, in the next race one of the lads was looking for sub 5 mins, so I let Steve set the pace for the first 600m with me waiting at the 600m mark to take over from Steve to carry on pacing duty.
Steve pulled over as he reached me and I sprinted off with the fast moving youngsters hot on my heels. I managed to hold them off and the race was won in 5.16.
I used my bike to pace the last race as there was a young guy who'd run 9.03 for the 3000 m in a track meet the night before, he was hoping for 4.30 pace, he won the mile in 4.48.
Great races and good training for Steve and me.RESULTS
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4 comments:
Rick, that was a good workout for you and Steve. Some great times from the kids there - might be some future champions in that lot. Are you sure it wasn't a downhill course? ;)
Very flat with 8 tight corners Ewen .
I'd like to run a downhill mile race, maybe I'd get under 5 mins :]
P.s. Southport runner Micheal Rimmer ran 4.47 for the mile in these races back in 2000, then went on to the Olypmics and world championships!
My claim to fame;
I beat him in a club mile race once!
But Mike was only 13 years old then!
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