I ran the Power Mile in New Orleans on June 1st! I don’t even remember exactly how this race came to be, other than that I was looking for a semi-competitive one mile race to do this summer and somehow stumbled across this one. I figured that since I had somewhat recently just tried to run a marathon (unsuccessfully I might add), I might as well go back to the drawing board and start over with a one mile race. Surely I could finish that! This is just a little self-deprecating humor in case you weren’t picking up what I was putting down. Sometimes you just gotta laugh at your life.
Anywho … I found this race and figured that I might be able to recruit some of my running girl gang to accompany me to New Orleans. As it turned out, no one else was really interested in racing a mile (and yes, they are the smart ones), but they were interested in going just for the fun of it. Sweet! I let them take the reins on the planning. Anyone else out there super obsessive about about everything in their life except for their travel plans or is that just me? Jessica found a beautiful hotel for us in the French Quarter. Since we were splitting the room four ways, we were able to splurge a bit on the accommodations. We all booked spa appointments for Sunday morning and just like that, our trip was set.
The race was at 7 p.m. Saturday evening, so this gave us plenty of time to spend time with our human friends, human children and furry children before leaving around lunch time. We are about two and a half hour drive from New Orleans, so we got there with plenty of time to get checked in at the hotel and relax for a few minutes before we made our way over to the race.
I’ll admit, I didn’t really do a ton of research on the race itself (which seems silly seeing as how I was traveling a couple of hours to run it, but whatever). There was a link to a Strava course map on the website and I briefly looked at that, noticing that it appeared to be two loops. I thought to myself, “Surely not.” Well, surprise! It was two loops of a city block in New Orleans. I gotta say, it was not the fastest of the courses that they could’ve chosen. I would’ve actually preferred an out and back course to this, but regardless, I’m still very glad that I raced.
My pie in the sky A goal for the race was to go just under 5:00. Based on my training, we felt this was within the realm of possibility, but it would be still be hard to pull off. From there, my B goal was to go under 5:10 and my C goal was to get a PR (which would’ve been right under 5:20). It’s really nice going into a race knowing that even your C goal is going to be faster than you’ve ever run before. I like it!
It’s a bit strange lining up on the start line in a different city, not knowing who you are racing against … who flies and dies, who is the steady pace setter, who is the actual competition, etc. There was really no need to worry about this too much, but admittedly I was a bit more nervous than I would’ve been on my “home turf.”
I didn’t take my splits at each quarter or anything like that, so I don’t have too much data to share from the race. I am pretty sure that when I started the second loop, the time was between 2:30 and 2:35, which is just about where I expected to be, if not slightly over. If you’ve never all-out raced a one mile race, I will tell you this … IT HURTS something FIERCE. It’s a different kind of pain than a marathon for sure, but I honestly don’t know which is worse. One is far more intense and one is just a gradual, agonizing kind of pain. Why is it that we do this again?!
Things got a bit real on that second loop and even though I knew that I was almost done (because let’s face it, you are almost done when you are standing on the start line to begin with), I just couldn’t find any sort of extra gear to dig any deeper or to pick the pace up at all. I was the second place female for the majority of the race, but I got out-kicked at the finish line. Crikey! I had no idea there was a girl anywhere near me, but I honestly don’t think that it would’ve mattered. She finished strong and I was just trying to hold on.
My official time was 5:10 and I got $100 for placing third! Pretty sweet. How many times can you say that you earned $100 for 5 minutes of work? I mean, that’s $1,200 per hour! Wut. I need a new career. Okay, let’s not really go there.
After the race I got to meet up with Grace, who I have been following online for years, and she introduced me to several of her friends. I ran my cool down with her crew, which was an added bonus! As it turns out, the first and second place girls ran at Georgetown and LSU, respectively. At least I was in good company.
Speaking of good company, I am so thankful for my wonderful friends who made the trip with me. We had a great 24 hour getaway. We had a wonderful dinner after the race, got a solid 8 hours of sleep, were up before the rest of the city for coffee and beignets, got some spa relaxation in and did brunch before heading home. These are my people!
