Summer Nights track and field

Over the summer I ran a series of three track races. After running longer races in the previous year it was fun to get back on the track again.

The first race in the series was a mile. There were a lot of competitors there and they broke us into three heats, which was good because I would have been left behind by the really fast runners there. The middle heat turned out to be perfect for me; I got pulled along to a time that was almost as fast as I had hoped to go by the end of the series.

The second race was an 800, a distance I'd only run once before since graduating high school. I was a little nervous about this race; I was never that fast at it to begin with and I have lost quite a bit of raw speed over the last decade or so. I almost chickened out of the race and ran the 3000m instead. Chelsey found it quite amusing (or confusing) that I would opt for the longer race, but that's more of my comfort zone. I stuck with the 800, though, and it turned out better than I hoped. In fact, the first lap was fast enough that I didn't even care too much how the second went - I was just happy to learn I was still capable of running that fast! Of course, I did slow down on the second lap, but I passed someone else and was closing in on another runner. A definite success.

The last race was a 1500m. I was hoping to improve on my (adjusted) mile time from the first race, but the race makeup was different this time: I was in the fast heat. Consequently I got pulled out a little too fast with the leaders (including a woman who had just run in the U.S. championships) and barely hung on to the main pack. It was a good thing I managed to hang on at all, as it was no-man's land behind me. My time ended up slightly slower than I had hoped for, but only because my first good race had raised my expectations.
-Jason