"Each step forward has a sacred meaning of its own" Sri Chinmoy
1 Mile Race - Jan 2024 - Antalya, Turkey
When I arrived in Turkey early in January 2005 I had been off running due to an old injury since the Clarendon Marathon on October 6th. 3 months of cross-training and dedicating myself to my physio rehab. Lucas the physio at UWE had told me I could try some running in early Jan if I stuck to the rehab and upped the number of reps or the amount of weight I was using, so on alternate days in the lead up to the trip I'd been doing my 3x10 squats with around 50kg of weights. I went for an exploratory jog one morning, 3 x 400m, and that provoked no reaction beyond the background soreness (what you'd call level 1 pain - no drama) so I signed myself off as fit to race the 1 miler.
The women/girls raced at 7.07 and the men/boys 10 mins later so I was able to see the fast finishers in the first race (Dhavala a clear winner) before we lined up in the darkness for our turn. There were 170 runners in all, a pretty awesome total for one of these Christmas-Trip-races. I wore a couple of layers and some lightweight jogging trousers rather than my usual race kit, as a kind of reminder to myself not to go off too quickly. We fell silent at the start, accompanied by the call to prayer from a nearby mosque, and then we were off.
I began with a smooth jog/shuffle but soon found myself swept up in the motion of the race and easing into a faster pace - more of what I would call brisk running than jogging, but not the all-out effort I was putting in back in New York in August (where I clocked a 5.56 mile) or last year's trip in Albania. Ahead we could see the lights on the summit of Tunek Tepe, but it was too dark to make out the mountains themselves. To our left was the gentle sound of the calm sea lapping on the shingle beach - to our right the lights of beachfront bars and restaurants. I began to shift into a more serious effort, encouraged by how everything (especially my knee) was feeling. From somewhere I got the idea I should be running around 7.30 pace for the mile. At the turnaround my watch told me I was on 7.25 pace, but the effort was starting to tell and I was a bit out of breath and sweating a lot in my layers. This is what happens when you're 56 and take 3 months out of hard training!
The return leg back towards Antalya was a harder effort but still felt OK - I think I got ahead of Karteek and Prachar but plenty of guys I wouldn't normally race against were staying ahead easily or passing me on the run-in.
Soon the line was approaching and I could see the digits on the clock - still below 7 minutes. Perhaps a massive surge would have got me in close to that magic number but I just stayed on-task (this was - after all - a tentative rehab run) and came in at 7.07. That meant the second half had been run at 6:48 pace which I am quite pleased with. There was none of the joyful feeling I get from giving it all up in a race and running at my very maximum effort, but there was a quiet satisfaction about being back out there. Gratitude.
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