5:39

Got myself to the Feb 11 meeting of the NYRR's Thursday Night at the Races at the Armory in NYC. Was planning on trying an 800m but got there earlier in the program than I expected and so opted for the mile rather than hanging around for 2 hours or so. It was still 45 minutes plus of standing around and trying to stay loose without wasting energy. Back when I had planned on one of these indoor meets to be the end of a 6-month "season" I had hoped to put up a 5:30 mile or the equivalent around this time. But I was sick between Thanksgiving and Christmas and so spent January getting back on my feet and so I'm really just at the beginning of a base building phase. And I had been in all-day meetings for 3 straight days. And had just come down with a bad case of some sort of stomach virus or something. And I swear the sun got in my eyes even though it was indoors at night. And how that rock got onto the Mondo track surface I'll never know. The splits were something like 43,43,43,42,42,42,42,41+1 for each 200m lap with that 1 through in for the last 9 meters or whatever. I wasted a bit of energy trying to get into position early to run 41s but the guys in front of my would just speed up if I tried to pass so that was a waste for all of us. So all consider 5:39 wasn't too bad. Last year at this time I ran 5:42... for 1500m. So that's a pretty good year-over-year improvement. Should be able to go quite a bit faster outdoors in June at the business end of this training cycle.