As a bunch of seniors within our club, we are very gradually improving when it comes to running short distances at high pace (relatively), but it is still a long way from our safe ground of 10K’s, half marathon’s and cross-country. Therefore the idea of rocking up to Stantonbury and doing a flat out mile is not that appealing to most of us. It is a small step into the unknown, but if ever you want to just see how fast you can do a mile then the middle of the Tour of MK is the place to do it.

The first seven races were allocated based on current standings in the tour, with 13 people in each race (mostly). This meant that Tim who was lying 14^th, was split from brother Tom who was 13^th and joined Elliot and Andy in the first heat. The psychology is quite interesting. Most people continually tell themselves not to push it too much as even a bad run is probably only going to cost 10 or 15 seconds and over the course of the week that is nothing. Then they step on the track and that goes out the window as your lungs approach bursting point on lap three.

Anyway, the mile often mixes up the places a little bit from the previous days as it is really a speed merchant’s event, but at the front end of the field there was little change around as Elliot (4:50) once again finished 4^th, Andy 9^th (5:02) and Tom 13^th (5:17.6). There is a reason why Tom gets the .6 on his time.

Tim featured in race two and spent most of race with leading lady Rachel Robinson as they dragged each other around. It was only in the finishing straight when Tim looked in danger of being pipped by Rachel that he found a little bit more pace to come home 4^th in 5:17.5!

Having missed out on the previous day’s cross-country and running a little further than she meant, Jo was looking to put in a strong performance in the mile and work her way back up the leaderboard. She was in race four which had an even male/female split and Jo spent much of race running sensibly in a group until final lap where she pushed towards front of that group as they all sprinted for the line. Four of the crossed the line within a second as Jo recorded 6:09 to be the 4th quickest lady on the night.

In race six, Fiona was looking to get near her 7:15 from last year but didn’t really mange to get into much of a group and therefore had to battle into the wind on the finishing straight for each lap and came home in a respectable 7:32.

At the end of yesterday’s mile races there were 97 people who had done all three races of the tour, yet there were 117 who took part last night, which suggests a healthy bunch who wanted to just come along and flog their guts out for just over 4 laps of the track. Adam was one of them……….!

Having completed the tour last year, he decided against abandoning Katie each night this year and thought he’d give the mile a good go. He was put into the final heat, which was a complete mix of different people who were not doing the whole tour, but had three other chaps all looking to run in the region of five minutes so he certainly had a race on his hands. He ran pretty well, but was slightly disappointed with his 5:05, particularly as his watch didn’t quite register a mile!

Anyway, with three races left to go – covering around 13 miles between them – there is still lots that can happen and many minutes, let alone tenths of a second to play for!