The end of week time trials kicked off today (4/23) with the infamous Chris Farley going after the sub 5 minute mile. Chris is planning on going after the sub 4:30 mile in August so today was going to be used as a bench mark to determine how far off he was at this point. At this point in his training Chris hasn't done any speed work at all and has been running a ridiculous amount of "junk" mileage (check out Chris' Blog Running My Life for the definition of junk miles).
Chris enlisted me to pace him through a 5 minute mile. I decided that in order for this to really go down we needed to turn it into a little bit more of an event than just Chris going around the track four times in under 5 minutes. So, I told Slicko aka Scott Anderson (Pacers Racing team guy, man has gone under 3:40 for the 1500) about the attempt. He was all for it and decided to help out with the pacing duties as well.
Of course, I couldn't just leave it at that, we had to get some more people involved. Seeing as this whole sub 4:30 mile thing started with the idea of Chris training with Julie (Culley), she had to be there. She showed up, camera and all, just to get some great pics with even better captions (such as the Pacers...got to love double entendre) . The fun didn't stop there though, we did the time trial at Chris' old high school and who should be there but his high school coach. To round it out we had his big bro Brian "Billy" Farley, out there as the official timer.
Slicko and I decided to trade off leads, I would take the 1st and 3rd quarters and Slicko would get the 2nd and 4th, leading Chris out to kick it in. Slicko and I had just done a workout an hour or two before so we were already pretty loose. I take the first 200m's through in 35 secs, a little fast but nothing that is going to kill the attempt. We come through the 400m at 73-74, Slicko takes the lead and we come through 800m at 2:28-2:29. With a big negative split in the second half Chris comes through at 4:51. Not bad for a guy who was talking like he wasn't going to break 5:10.
It was great seeing Chris get that excited about the run. Today was one of those days were I felt kind of lucky to be a part of Pacers. I mean I get to train with some great guys, and an awesome Coach. And I get to work with some pretty cool people too. Its not always the "easy" life but its definitely a lot better than hating every single day of work. Anyway, congrats to Chris and I guess we'll see that sub 4:30 mile at the Supernova Classic in August.
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