Describe your most anomalous racing performance - AKA your Bob Beamon moment

Awesome story, mine is not quite as grand but it I still wonder about it to this day. It’s sophomore year, only my second year running XC. This was only the second meet, and it happened in the 4th week of our season. So up to this point I had ran a season of JV, where I PR’d at 18:25 for 5k, then took an entire year off, and now I was on my 4th week of running 15-20 mpw by cutting long runs and skipping easy runs. The week prior, our number 5 runner had gotten injured, meaning I needed to be on varsity, so coach decides that I’ll be training through this meet while some of the guys get an easy day or two right before the meet. They want to run fast there, but he needs me long term for post season, and it’s not like I’d run fast anyway. So I hammer a huge session of intervals the day before this race. I wake up on race day super sore. Mid day I’m still sore. The evening comes and soreness starts to clear up somehow, (the race is at around 8pm). Warming up I actually start feeling like Superman. The first 400 meters, I swear if I had a 400m PR I might’ve equaled it, but I was just floating, ahead of my whole team, in the top ten. I gain some awareness and look around to see our top guy is significantly behind me. So I ease off a little, but I still come through the mile the fastest I’d ever ran a mile in, 5:21. It blew my mind, but I’d only ever ran the mile in PE, so it’s a weak PR at least. I come through the two mile, mid pack at this point, and I split my PR that was set literally 7 days ago in a two mile race. I’m fighting for my life over the third mile but I close decently and come through in 17:09 (5k), 4th on the team. The weirdest part is, I’ve had some really painful races where I could barely move at the finish, but I barely felt pain during or after this one. Now I known this doesn’t seem that crazy, just seems like I had a breakthrough or discovered big talent, but the thing is, I’m not even that talented. I didn’t even touch this time again until senior year, and I didn’t even touch the 17’s the rest of that season. Senior year, after having 4 years, and several competitive seasons of running and some serious summer mileage under my belt, I only bettered my time by just 10 seconds. So yeah I somehow reached 95 percent of my 5k potential after 4 weeks of 20 mpw, go figure.

I'll throw a story out but this "Beamon Moment" is also tinged with a great amount of disappointment. My junior year of college my roommate and I made a bet for $20 that I wouldn't get up early and run every day for a week. This led to the first 60 mile week of my life and my first stint of regular doubles since high school. I maintained mileage in the upper 50s and had my eyes set on a track 5k right before spring break (about another month away). A few weeks before that, there was a road race our running club was doing and I thought it would be a great tuneup. The race was notoriously hilly and I got to the starting line late so I was crammed in with a bunch of strollers. The course was a direct out and back with the first half being uphill. Because I was clustered in with the masses, I spent pretty much the first mile making my way up until eventually I was in second place and reaching the turnaround. I hadn't been paying attention to any splits but as soon as I started heading down I realized how tired I was but the downhill carried me forward. As the finish approached, I was feeling the pace and hills but was still riding that momentum from the downhill. I crossed the line just past 17:00 (previous PR was 17:10 on the track the previous year). I was gutted but then saw my chip time had me at 16:50 because of my delayed start in the back. I was over the moon! The disappointment comes when I had an awful race at on the track a couple weeks later and could only muster 17:18 and nearly dropped out.

My anomalous running moments occurred when I would adjust my hip angle in such a way that my left leg had more freedom of movement, and even then that 'trick' would only work on occasion. Turned out I had a left thigh bone so large in diameter that I rarely had any range of motion, but somehow I would get some at those moments because I had tilted my hips. or in my 20s because I had electricity run through my hip joint to enliven the nerves.

HS Soph CC in October: won a fresh-soph CC dual meet race in a time over 30 seconds faster than the time on the course previously run in a big race that had featured several of the top fresh-soph in the state.

HS Senior in November: ran mile on HS's dirt-sand track in training shoes: 4:28. We had calculated that the HS track was 2-2.5 seconds slower per lap than a regular track. Training shoes cost 2-3 seconds per lap.

College Fresh in January: TT in spikes and on the fly: 22.4 through 200m, 48.5 at 400m, 64.6 at 500m.

College Fresh in Apr: ran 200m on fly in spikes--was 10.5 off the curve and the timer thought I would run 20.7, but the last 40m my legs just couldn't maintain and I only ran 22.5. Years later I found out about the problem with my range of motion, and probably the nerves had deadened the last 40m.

College Fresh in Apr: ran 5 x 200m on fly in spikes with 400m jog and 200m walk (run with a teammate): 21.3; 21.7; 22.2; 22.6; 23.2.

College after Fresh year, in summer open meet: jogged first 100m of 400m in 15 seconds so that a teammate (steeplechaser) could run good 400m (too many runners, so we doubled up in the lane). With 300m left, I took off and then cruised the last 100m, running 52.2.

College (2 years later) 10-mile Sunday morning run in between CC and track season; ran with guys renting rooms in a house. We ran on a dirt path that was 5 miles out, 5 miles back. We were 25 flat at the 5 mile mark, then I started cruising back and two of the guys kept the pace until around 8 miles, then floated in. I ran 55 min, and those 2 guys ran between 52-53.

Several years later, on a dirt track, ran 48.6 400m relay split in training shoes. Figured that was 47-47.5 in spikes on tartan track.

In late 80s, ran first 5 miles of Malaysia (Airlines) Marathon in 25.25, before Nike Sock Racer sole separated near the toe box on left shoe. Could not have held pace much more than 7 miles, but I wasn't tired at 5.

A year later, ran a measured 1/2 mile on a road in 1:53 (after I had electricity run through my hip area 3 times in a couple of weeks). I was 29 years old by then.

Lol did you just convert a 4:28 to a 4:08?

Soph year HS, first big track meet of the indoor season. 75 or so schools, early am to midday was the frosh-soph meet (to be followed by the varsity meet that went into the evening). I was in the frosh-soph triple jump.

Got to the runway area and looked around at the other jumpers. As we warmed up, one guy looked pretty good so I asked him how far he could jump ... crap. Over 1 and a half feet better than my PR.

I was gunning for the dude, though. Each of my jumps got progressively better, until I nailed a huge PR on my last jump. Beat my old PR by nearly 2 feet and won the competition by 1 1/4 inches!

It's still one of my most exhilarating moments in competition, all these years later.

Don't have any in my primary events, which I suppose is a good thing.

Was an 800m/miler, so my 5000m PR was pretty weak. Did a team time trial my last year of college running and ran 15:22, which I'm guessing was 30 seconds better than what my best time had been before then.

This is the most Boomer thing I have ever read.

Buffalo Marathon, May 1991.

I'd been running seriously for only a couple of years and had just run a 2:53 marathon PR in January, and was looking to get under that. Buffalo was a small race with mostly local runners, but one woman, "B", had announced her intent to go for the OT standard of 2:45 that day. At the start I watched B take off and disappear up the road, and I figured I'd never see her again. But I immediately found myself going too fast. I hit the 5-mile split about 10 seconds off my 5-mile PR and said "this is going to get ugly". I kept trying to slow down but I just couldn't. When I hit the halfway point in a huge PR of about 1:22 still feeling great, I started dreaming about that 2:45. I tried to stay relaxed.

About the 20-mile mark, my friend who was intermittently pacing me on a bike (no one much cared about that sort of thing back then, as long as the cyclist didn't get in anyone's way) told me that I was gaining on B. By 23 miles he told me B looked really bad and he thought I could catch her. By then I didn't feel so great either and I kept waffling between easing up, finishing with a great PR but missing the OT standard, and pressing on for the standard with the risk of blowing up.

I came around the final turn and my friend peeled off. I fixed my eyes on the finishing clock and ran toward it with all my heart, but I watched it click over from 2:44:xx to 2:45:xx, eased up and jogged in. Lying across the finish line I found B, who had collapsed several times in the final quarter-mile and crawled across the line in 2:44:57. She got the win and the OT standard, and her finish made the local TV news. My 2:45:16 got me a huge PR and a feeling of amazement that I could have run that fast.

I did continue to improve slowly, and I got the OT standard five months later. It was very satisfying, but no longer amazing.

With an 800m PR of 2:07, which had been 2:14 a week earlier, I ran a 1:58 split. Watched the Pre movie the night before the meet and decided I was handing off on the lead no matter what and it worked.

A friend of mine, who at the time had an HS 800m PR of 2:03, CLOSED a 1500m in 1:56. You read that right. He came from a bad HS program, focused on CC/5k/10k his freshman year of college. He decided to run the 1500m at conference, D3, and won the thing in 4:10 or something with a massive negative split for a terrible winning time. Bottom there is that he responded massively to a year and a half of mileage. Ended up at 1:53 and 3:51 if memory is correct.

I had many small PRs but maybe one nice jump.

I was a 400/800 runner at the start of college.

I ran my first 1500m ever my sophomore year (first race over 800m).

I ran 4:05.

Junior year I ran in a 4 X 1500 and split 4:01.

I told my coach I wanted to run the 1500 in our conference meet since I was only our #3 800m runner.

I surprised myself and won the conference championship in 3:54.

I knocked it down to 3:42 a couple years later but that 3:54 was my big leap.