Main Street Mile: Impending Doom

(Hicham El Guerrouj, 3:43 PB in the mile, 12:50 for the 5K)

Yes, I was stupid enough to sign up for this:

PEORIA —

Parker Thompson is feeling a bit uneasy about tackling the Main Street Mile.

“I am a little nervous about the (Main Street) hill, just for injury’s sake,” said Thompson, the 2007 Class A state high school champion in the 1600 meters, the track and field equivalent of the mile. “I certainly wouldn’t want to be stupid going down the hill.”

The Main Street Mile is Peoria’s first start-to-finish downhill road race and it’s happening at 7 p.m. Thursday night.

All proceeds raised will be split between Youth Outreach and the Peoria Track and Field Club.

The race starts outside Running Central’s front door, at the intersection of Main and Sheridan, goes down and around the curve on Main Street hill, through downtown Peoria and finishes at Washington Street.

“With that in mind, I plan on running the hill relativity conservatively but finding that perfect line between insanity and the maximum speed I can run,” said Thompson, a recent Tremont graduate who also won state championships in the 800 meters and cross country.

Main Street Mile chairman and Running Central co-owner Adam White is looking for big things out of Thompson.

White thinks that Thompson, whose best mile time is 4:18, may have the potential to crack the four-minute barrier.

“I can say one of our individuals, Parker Thompson, has proven himself as an individual who has serious wheels,” White said.

“He certainly has the potential to flirt with four minutes, whether or not he is going to be pushed by other people in a capacity that he chooses to try and challenge that mark.”

As of Tuesday night, White had 125 runners signed up to participate in the inaugural event. But unlike Thompson, White thinks that the runners will have no problem with the Main Street hill as well as breaking the five-minute mark.

“Most runners have run an area of Peoria that has that type of grade downhill at some point in their training,” White said, “and probably a little more regularly than a lot of us realize.

“The extreme grade that most people might be a little bit concerned about, that first swooping down, going along side of Methodist, is no steeper than —in length or grade — what people do in the (Steamboat) 15K.”

Whether or not the runners conquer the hill or the hill conquers the runners, White knows that this race has been a long time coming.

“The mile race down Main Street is something that runners have talked about for decades,” White said. “The inspiration and discussion of a Main Street Mile has been around since before I was ever even born.”

“From a classic distance perspective, the mile is one of the most infamous distances for an individual to be able to run, race and test oneself,” he continued. “It’s not too short, it’s not too long. It’s a distance that just about any person can do. And you have great barriers for each individual, him or herself, to be able to try and break.”

There is one heat of walkers, then three heats of runners. I am in heat II (6:20 to 8:00). Yes, I fit in; I haven’t broken 6 minutes since 2000 (and that was 5:59). In 2005 I managed a pathetic 6:45.

Sure, I am untrained but this establishes a baseline; one that should be easy to beat.

I don’t know why the mile appeals to me; I suppose it is you and your performance; there is absolutely no satisfaction in “just finishing”. Also, due to the brevity, you ARE going to be in pain for most of the way; the last 1/4 is horrible.

Yet it lures me; “victory” means pushing through the pain and not giving into it. Toward the end of the race, EVERYTHING hurts…BAD.

Interestingly enough, my best time 5:30, while poor, represents my best running performance (compared to my 5K, 10K, and so on) and my time of 5:38 for the 1600 meter as a 38 year old was my best “old” running performance; it grades out to 68.04 on the age graded tables.

Anyway, we shall see. This is a downhill course; the computer predicts 6:53.

Note: by the age graded tables, my best racewalk was my 8:31 1500 meter in 2003. This distance seems to be my best; not sure as to why.