2014 Lincoln Mile Race Recap

The 2014 Lincoln Mile was one of my most anticipated races of the year. I went into this race last year hoping to be under 7 minutes. I impressed myself last year with a 6:01 finish. After the race ended last year I went on to train for a Half-Marathon and eventually a Marathon and didn't give much thought to the Lincoln Mile again until June of this year. I never trained for this race exclusively this year, but all the training I had done had got me in better shape to hopefully have a wonderful time. Kiera was also super excited for this race again this year because she ran it and had fun last year too. She ran last year at her best time for a mile ever with 10:03.

In my heat of 30-39 year olds we got to conversing before the start of the race about our goal times. We had a few trying for sub 5:00. I set my (what i thought was a) realistic goal at 5:20. I thought given my training and how much faster I am now that 5:20 was obtainable.

I started out with a sprint early in the race with the pack of leaders. I tried at about .2 to get around a pack that was slowing off the lead. I passed them at attempt 3 but had lost quite a few seconds and even more momentum. I tried to push hard at the end but did not have much left at all. My finishing time was 5:43 - :23 seconds over my goal.

Kiera’s race was about 30 minutes after mine, so i got a chance to rest up. She had asked me to run beside her and help pace her to beat her time last year. In our sitting & waiting i tried to not show disappointment in myself after not beating my goal. That is something she has always struggled with, she is always too hard on herself after races. She opened up the race with a dead sprint for the first 1/8th of the race and her heart was definitely beating pretty fast at that point. I came off the sidelines and met her around there. I had her slow down but it was too late; the damage was already done. it took her 2 walk breaks to get her heart back down and back to where she could just jog. She got to that point around .33 miles in. She ran the rest of the race at that 9:00 pace we had practiced but with the 2 early walk breaks her finish time was 10:43. She did really good at not being too hard on herself after the race though. I always feel so blessed to be able to do races with her and teach her things.