Saturday morning I drove to Austin and ran the Congress Avenue Mile. It’s a great course – starts at the capitol building and runs straight down Congress Ave to the bridge – exactly a mile, mostly downhill.

Going into this I figured there was about a 10% chance of breaking my 4:40 PR (set in HS), although I was certain I’d go under 5:00, and pretty sure I’d go under 4:50.

I checked in, picked up my bag and put on my race number. I looked through the bag and, upon finding no chip, thought “Hmm – that’s surprising – I guess they just do it the old fashioned way…”

I jogged down to the finish and back while watching the senior citizens run their heats and observed that each quarter mile mark had a big digital clock – very cool! Another plus: almost the entire course was in the shade of the downtown buildings.

I worked my way to the starting line when they called for my wave (men non-elite age 19-39). I seeded myself in the second row, figuring the first few guys in this wave would finish in around 4:30. When they called out “3 minutes to start time," in my boredom I looked down at peoples' shoes and saw one guy had a chip, another guy had a chip – everyone but me had a chip! I had a split-second debate with myself whether it would be worth it to risk missing the start to go get my chip, and decided to go find the chip people. Luckily, they were close by and I was able to get back to my previous spot on the starting line with about a minute to spare.

The horn went off and we ran down the narrow driveway that leads from the steps of the capitol building to Congress Ave. We were in an uncomfortably tight pack the first 100 meters or so – someone behind me brushed my foot twice – I couldn’t speed up because I was boxed in (note to self: start in the front row next time). Once we got off the driveway and onto Congress Ave, we were able to spread out a little more, and I passed the guy in front of me. At this point we could see the finish line clearly – it appeared a lot closer than it was. There were still maybe six or eight guys ahead of me, and I figured they’d pull away gradually, but they didn’t. Instead I began moving past them – one by one until I passed the first place guy, right around the quarter mile mark, which we passed in 1:05, exactly where I wanted to be time-wise.

I felt surprisingly fresh for being through the first quarter and kept the pace up. I passed the half mile mark in 2:10 and was still surprised at how good I felt and even more surprised that the footsteps behind me were getting quieter. I passed the third quarter in about 3:17 and was starting to hurt, as expected. I could barely hear anyone behind me now and started pumping the arms to try and gut out the last quarter. I was pretty sure I was going to break my PR at this point, but when the finish clock came into clear focus it read 4:22 and I said to myself “You can go under 4:30 if you hurry up!” I lumbered through the finish in 4:28.47 – ten seconds ahead of the next guy and 11.5 seconds better than my PR from high school!

There was also an elite wave where a couple guys went sub-4, which was awesome to witness. Also, they had very competitive high school boys and girls elite divisions, where four of the boys went under 4:10 and five of the girls went under 4:50 – smokin’!