Cinco de Moana: Margarita Mile Race Report!

1 mile. 4 margaritas. If you puke you're disqualified.

It was a two-for-one on Saturday in terms of races! (Three-for-one if you count the Kentucky Derby!) In the morning I had Doughman X and in the evening I had the Sinnott Circle Margarita Mile! The Sinnott Circle Circuit (SCC) is an unofficial race series organized just for fun by Fleet Feet friends. It includes ridiculous races like a beer mile, a taco mile, and a milk and cookies mile. The milk and cookies Holiday Mile was the first one I participated in last year, and I was excited about the first SCC race of the year - a Moana-themed Margarita Mile!

I had some ambitious goals for this race. I knew I could quickly throw back some margaritas and I figured this could be my chance to crank out a decently fast food mile. With only a kinda sorta minor fiasco leading up to the race involving the 1.75L of unopened tequila sliding off the table and shattering on the concrete - resulting in a quick run to the liquor store - we all soon enough lined up at the starting line, Dixie cups full of margaritas in hand. A race spectator counted down the time and we started chugging.

That first margarita went down in one quick gulp and I sped off after Nora, Jordan, and even McCrae. Nora and Jordan Ayers are reliably speedy: Nora is a two-time Boston finisher and her husband Jordan is also a runner. McCrae was the dark horse of the race: this was the first time many of my Fleet Feet friends had met him and at 6'3" he doesn't strike you as a fast runner, but all those years of soccer have endowed him and me with plenty of fast-twitch muscles - as long as we can sustain it.

I chased hard after Nora for that first quarter mile lap around the neighborhood, but as we came around the last turn of the lap and I gasped hard for air I knew I would have to ease up or risk puking - not even from the margaritas but just from the running effort - so I scaled back and took a minute to catch my breath as I downed the next margarita in two gulps.

Once more around the track, with each lap getting harder to stomach the margarita.

"It wasn't even the alcohol!" McCrae exclaimed later. "It was the mix! It was so sugary and that didn't sit well."

I had to agree - the sugar rumbled uncomfortably in my stomach and each successive margarita was harder to get down, but I steeled my gut and pushed through.

As I was working on downing the final margarita for my last lap Jill caught up to me. She chugged her margarita faster than me and took off, but I was two steps behind her and I pushed hard for some speed. I had the sudden realization that if I could hold Jill off I'd actually get a podium finish for the women - a first time ever for me to place in a race! Strategy started running through my head: if Jill got a sudden burst of speed how hard could I run to stave her off? How much of a lead did I need to ensure she didn't have a last-minute kick? I paced myself accordingly and...wait for it...wait for it...yes! Second place female finisher!

I finished right around 9:30 pace - not bad for a Margarita Mile. Nora, naturally (the little speedster) finished first with an unreal time of 7:29. Her husband Jordan finished shortly after her in the high sevens and McCrae finished somewhere in the 8th minute, and I realized happily it was a double date finish: Nora + Jordan, McCrae + me.

I think I surprised Jill a bit by my speediness that day. "Dang Liz, you got fast!" she exclaimed after the race as we hung out in Nora and Jordan's living room eating snacks (of course I brought cookie cake) and sobering up. "First you ran an 8:30 mile at Doughman this morning and then you ran a 9:20 Margarita Mile? Where did this speed come from??"

I just laughed and at some point said, "Well, if you go running with my dog Ryder you'll get faster. He has two speeds: full sprint and stopped to pee. Eventually you'll get faster!"

Ah, good times. And I can't wait until the next race in the series!