"Each step forward has a sacred meaning of its own" Sri Chinmoy
1 Mile Race - Jan 2025 - Konyaalti , Antalya
My restart of running after 3 months of injury-rehab were going well in Antalya, so I resolved to beat my modest mile time of 7:07 with a sub-7 time in the second one miler. For this one, conditions felt milder, but as I warmed up I could feel the promenade was more slippery after overnight rain - there was a little standing water too. It had been a tight timescale getting changed and out there after the 6:45 finish of meditation in the Megasaray for a 7.07 start, but being accustomed to quick changes I was one of the first out and soon jogging to warm up. After around 10 minutes of that, I did some dynamic stretching, snapped a photo of the start and lined up for the moment of silence before the off. To my right I could hear the Muezzin calling the locals to prayer, to my left the lively surf washing over the pebble beach.
From the start I was consciously running faster than before, confident that my knee could take it, following Prachar and Suswara and keeping pace with Marek. The brief had been to keep left on the course (which was a straight out-and-back with a single turn around a marshal - Gabriele) but nobody had heard and so we were spread out across the width of the promenade and mostly keeping right! Well, there was hardly anyone around in the pre-dawn and we almost had the sea front to ourselves. I didn't check my pace at any stage, but as the half way point came up I did glance down at my split time and was surprised to be approaching the turn with 3.06 on my watch. That was ahead of schedule, but I wasn't sure I could match that for the second half unless I really went for a max race effort. Although I held back a tiny bit, it did feel like a race and not an interval/tempo session.
As I approached the Crowne Plaza, with the outline of the Megasaray looming beyond it, I doubled my rate of breathing and found myself running almost all-out. I couldn't catch Suswara up ahead, but even though he accelarated towards the finish I didn't lose touch with him and that helped me sustain the pace to come in with a time of 6:18. I was well happy! Garmin tells me my max HR in the second half was 167, less than last time and well below the 178 I peaked at in the 2 miler, so I know I can go faster. This was the last miler of the trip for me, so I'll see how things go in the remaining races, of which there are 2 in the next 3 days (swim-run and 5k). It seems like a sudden load but as my injury problems seem to be under control I'll give both a go. The feeling of getting faster is very satisfying, even if I'm starting again (as has happened so often) from nothing.
Dhavala won the girl's race in around 6.06 (the younger runners still can't match her for speed) and Dima was the fleet-footed victor among the boys with something close to 4:30. Kokila finished faster than last time too, looking more like the runner she is now she has shaken off the post-covid fatigue ( a long struggle but one she is definitely winning).
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