The Fifth Avenue Mile -- Saturday September 30th along Central Park in New York City

I was ready to see how fast I really am so I decided to try a one mile race...

I took the 2 a.m. Chinatown bus on the morning of Saturday September 30th from Washington, D.C. to New York City. I got let out in Chinatown in Manhattan at 5:45 a.m. still a bit tired and 4 hours til race time. I wound up taking the subway up to Chelsea and hanging out at Starbucks for a couple hours until heading to the Upper East Side where the race was going on.

The Fifth Avenue Mile is a 1 mile road race down Fifth Ave along Central Park from 80th Street to 60th Street (see the map). There is a small uphill during the first quarter mile and then the rest is downhill -- the course is the fastest and most prestigious 1 mile road race in the world. The race was run in waves going off every 15 minutes. I got to see the wave of under 15 year old runners start and then the 15-29 year old females. I did a 10 minute warm up jog around Central Park before it was time to line up with the males age 15-29 for the 9:45 a.m. wave start. There turned out to be more than 500 people running in my wave and 372 finishers in the males age 20-29 group. I lined up in the middle of the pack so it took a few seconds to get going once the gun went off. I ran hard and thought I was trekking pretty good but wound up crossing the finish line at 5 minutes and 31 seconds -- 1 minute 8 seconds behind the winner of the 20-29 age group (4:23) and 1 minute 37 seconds behind the professional winner (3:54). I was out of breath for a couple minutes after the finish but once I caught my breath I was ragingly pissed I hadn't pushed harder during that short 5 minutes.

I met Jill at the finish line and we went to FAO Schwarz to play with the stuffed animals and eat a brownie sundae. Then we walked up through Central Park and saw John Stewart playing with his kid under a bridge. We traversed up to the Guggenheim Museum and saw a cool architecture exhibit and some famous art. Met up with Dee for sushi in SoHo before a crazy night of barhopping - "it's raining Jagermeister all night long", a trip to the store "GirlProps" for sunglasses & wigs, and then clubbing first at Bank and then at the infamous Roxy before getting back to Jill's place sometime around 6 in the morning. Jill and I met up with Adrienne at a Ukranian diner on Sunday morning for brunch which was awesome, and then some shopping before hopping on the bus back to D.C. Overall, I had a blast and it was great training for the NYC Marathon coming up in a few weeks. I will be back next year to break 5 minutes.