A little slower, more fun

At the third BU Mini Meet, I ran the mile again.  I seeded myself at 4:55 with the hope that Kevin and I would get in the same heat and be able to battle it out, but with 18 total heats we ended up getting split into heat 9 & 10. While Kevin's heat went out FAST, and Kevin took 4 seconds off of his time from the previous week (hell yeah), my heat went out much more conservatively.

I've been battling some sort of injury to my right leg and so when the gun went off I went straight to last place. I was intent on not getting tripped up, and I wanted to get a feel for how my leg would respond to the faster pace on the banked track.  As we came through the first lap there were no issues, and the pace was a little slow all the way around.  As we were about to pass the 400 mark, I made a small surge to pass 4 runners that seemed to be going a little slow and I passed the line at ~1:14 high.

There was a bit of tripping, and lots of bunching up in the large pack ahead of me, and so on the straight heading to the 600 mark, I made another surge to get into second position. I remained here until a young kid tried to cut in front of me at the start coming off the first turn after passing the 800. I was pretty pissed since he almost tripped me, and I ended up yelling at him telling him he can't cut in if there isn't any room. Once he got into lane one a made a hard move into first place and put a nice gap on the rest of the pack, but it was mostly due to annoyance/anger. I slowed down a bit very shortly thereafter, but I should've kept the momentum and held that surge for another 150. Oh well.

I accelerated slightly from 1200 to 1400, and then on the bell lap I had a nice kick with a younger kid. He tried to pass me on the first turn, and I felt a little insulted. On the turn!? Pft, no way kid. No. Way. As Jon Waldron would put it, I was 'running for the win.' On the final straight I gave a hard surge, which was more than enough to hold off the scrappy youngster.

This was a much more encouraging race vs the first BU mini meet. Even though I was slower, I felt comfortable the entire time, and perhaps more importantly - I felt in control.

4:51 and the win. Cool.