When I ran track in high school my events were the 100m hurdles, 300m hurdles and 4x400m relay. Although I ran cross country when it came to track season I had no interest in running anything over 400m. 17 years later that would finally change.
The Tuesday after Jason and I returned home from Vermont we drove to Messiah College after work for an all comers’ track meet. I had been incredibly excited to see them post about hosting three of these. When I was in high school Millersville University used to have them. We talked two of our local running buddies, Kelly and Andrew, into coming there to run as well. We all agreed to running the mile and after emailing the meet director to confirm we could do a co-ed relay, agreed to run the 4x400m as well.
We arrived early as I hadn’t been on Messiah’s campus since I was a senior in high school (I had applied and was accepted but ultimately chose to go to Lebanon Valley before transferring my sophomore years and graduating from York). We spotted Kelly and Andrew and not long after a few of my track kids began to arrive as well. A $5 entry fee allowed us to run as many events as we wanted. Jason and I had ran a mile workout in May and used those times to estimate what times we would run so that when we signed up they knew how to line everyone up. We ran almost a mile warmup and waited for our event to be called.
Despite the meet not starting until 6:30pm it was warmer than we expected with the sun still shining. No one had signed up for the first event, the 4x100m relay, so the mile was up first. We lined up along the curved starting line which felt very strange compared to lining up in lanes like I did in high school. There were only 12 total participants so it was ran as a co-ed race.
The gun went off, I took off and immediately began to work myself towards the inner lane; a bit of an unnerving experience but the limited runners and varying speeds helped to ensure I didn’t get tripped up. I realized immediately something didn’t work correctly with starting my watch, so proving my mile on Strava went out the window. Around 130m it dawned on me that I was ahead of Kelly and big red flag went off in my head as she is much faster than me. I tried to scale back and she did pass me. I finished the first lap and heard “1:30” called out and again a warning went off in my head that I was going too fast.
I had originally wanted to run each lap in 1:45 in hopes of breaking 7 mins given my solo mile in May was a 7:17. My brain battled itself between knowing I couldn’t hold that pace and realizing it was only a 4 lap race that I might as well hold on as best as I could. I didn’t hear splits for the 2nd and 3rd laps, and the two lead guys passed me. I was fighting to hold on as my legs were working as hard as they could, but my lungs were struggling to keep up. I was relieved to cross the finish line and surprised to find I had ran a 6:37! Jason had gone out harder than he should’ve as well and Kelly almost caught him in the final stretch, but he managed to hold her off and run a 6:19 while she clocked 6:20. Andrew, the only one of us who actually ran the mile in high school track, ran a 5:07. The winner, a guy who looked to be in his 40s, had smoked us all in a blazing 4:18!
We had plenty of time to recover as the 4x400m relay was listed as the last event. I was able to watch 4 of my kids hurdle. My best hurdler had the challenge of running against the PIAA state 110h champion. Needless to say he didn’t beat him, but I’m glad he had the experience of racing that kind of talent.
Our team was the only one signed up for the relay, so I talked to one of the college kids there volunteering and convinced him to get some friends to race us. By the time we lined up he had actually recruited multiple athletes and we had 3 teams to race against! Jason and Kelly never ran track in high school so when the four of us warmed up I had shown them how to pass the baton. The organizers, in keeping with the low-key feel of the meet, didn’t require a 3 turn stagger even though I had prepared for it by putting myself as the second runner. The college kids were gracious and gave us lane 1 even though we told them they’d be a lot faster than us!
Jason led off our relay team and held his own against much more experienced kids. I took the baton from him and sprinted as best as I could, trying to close the gap on the guy ahead of me. My track kids were positioned on the final turn to cheer for me. It was a good spot for them to be as I was trying to hang tough at that point and I knew I couldn’t let them down! I passed the baton off to Kelly and Andrew anchored our team through the finish line in a 5:12.1. The two all male teams beat us, but we did beat the all female team. It didn’t dawn on me until after that I should’ve had one of my track kids run a stopwatch to get splits on us.
Slightly bummed he didn’t know his time, Jason was still ecstatic about how he ran and said how fun that relay was. Kelly and Andrew said they had a lot of fun as well, and we all agreed it was a good night of speed work for all of us. I encourage any runner who has never tried a track event to see if there are any local all comers’ meets in your area and give it a try!