Short: I won the women's one mile race, coming 2nd overall, in 6:57. But, I need to stress it was a small race (9 participants overall), but I am proud I managed to repeat last year's win. 

Long:

This is my running club's annual end of cross country season race, named after a fellow who donated the money for the cup many years ago by the name of Joe Giles. He's now passed away, but his claim to fame (as far am I'm concerned) is that he lived next door to the famous Arthur Lydiard, who was also a member, well coach, in my running club. The running club has a long and illustrious history, but our heyday was in the 60s and 70s with the likes of Peter Snell. These days we are a small club coming back after a mass exodus of talent about 10 years ago, and I've only been a member for about 5 years, during the rebuilding phase.

We had a 5 mile race three weeks ago, which had a few more runners (about 25) and I came 3rd in the masters women. In today's mile race the woman who won that (2.5 minutes faster than me) was my sole competitor. She's a Japanese woman about my age and I know she's fast but is not training a lot right now. I had done a little bit of speedwork (intervals, last week) for this and my A goal was to get under 7 minutes. My B goal was under 7:30 and my C goal was to beat last year's 7:58. The course was around a flat paved bike path through the park, finishing on our track, kind of a U-shaped course, with the last long straight heading into the wind, but this turned out not to be much of a factor, phew! The lack of competitors in the mens' race was a disappointment. Last year's winner is injured, and the runner up had a family emergency to deal with. That left a bunch of older masters runners who I was confident I could beat, and my husband. One older gentleman who was running told my husband during the warm up that he had once run a 4:05 mile (and a 2:38 marathon). Our daughter who is 10 was also running.

We set off with the moderate wind behind us (last year the wind had been terrible) and immediately it's the Japanese lady (Yuko) and me in the lead. I hung back a couple of seconds behind Yuko, not really believing I could challenge her in the race. After reading the 'how to run a mile' thread just a few hours ago I knew I had to be giving it everyhting from the get-go, but I had seen Yuko in the 5 mile put on a lot of speed at the end. After about a quarter of a mile my husband overtook me and hung behind Yuko until about the half way point before overtaking her. My husband is annoying in that he hardly trains, but has enough speed to blitz me in these shorter races. I'm trying to encourage him to run more seriously and train for some longer distances.

In the second half of the race I suddenly realised I was making ground on Yuko, and eventually even my husband, Charlie. Sure enough, by the 3/4 mile mark I realised I was in with a chance of catching her, so I gave it all I had. As we got onto the track I could see she was tiring and when we got onto the straight I really gave it everything and I caught her and passed her less than 20 yards from the finish. In the end, I finished in 6:57 and I was only 3 seconds behind Charlie, and Yuko was 2 seconds behind me, so it was a closely fought race. Of course, Charlie was extrememly lucky not many men turned up, but was highly amused to take home the men's trophy, and me the women's. DD came in 5th, so the whole family did well!! We had a short prize giving and then tucked in to a pot luck meal. Some people had their families along, and we all knew each other, so it was a fun evening.

The funny thing is now I'm home and can analyse the race, most of my PRs, from 1 mile to 13.1, are pretty aligned according to McMillan's race time projector. Note my 5 mile and 10k PRs are on suspected short courses. I'm not totally sure that is a good thing, but at least I am consistent. My 5k time projects my exact 1 mile time within 2 seconds, and my half marathon time within 6 seconds. Does anyone have input on this phonomenon?

Congratulations on surpassing your "A" goal and beating your competitor.  Enjoyed reading your race report.

Congrats on the sub-7 mile, way to go!  That's great that you are so consistent across different distances too!

Great job, Kiwi!  Sub-7 is sub-7 no matter who shows up!  Great job!

Nice racing, and congrats to the rest of the family as well! How cool!

Congrats!! Great night for your family.

A sub-7 mile isn't easy for almost anyone.  That's serious business.  Congrats!