Meet of the Miles Picnic

Seattle's Club Northwest summer picnic is combined with the "Meet of the Miles" a Sunday afternoon set of mile races on the West Seattle track.  I intend to go to the picnic, so  naturally I am game to jump in a mile race.  Who cares that I have not done much mile specific training?  I figure the 12 x 400 meter intervals I did a month ago might help.  And at the Club Northwest track workout on the previous  Wednesday we ran 4 x1600 on a 3-minute rest cycle.  I managed to run the last 1600 in a 5:20, providing me with a modicum of confidence going into the picnic run.  I figure a picnic event should be pretty casual anyway - three-legged races, tug-of-war, water balloon tosses...   But Club Northwest is all business.  Even the "Milk Mile" (drink 12-ounces of milk then race 400 meters x 4) is a remarkably determined affair - especially in contrast to the revelrous beer mile I participated in (see below). 

The small group of grimly determined runners in my masters (40 years old+) mile heat burst out at 70-second per lap (4:40) pace, and it is all I can do to not follow them.  I knew I had to go out easy…  Still I hit 400 meters in 76 seconds and after that I find myself slogging out the remaining 3 laps at 80 second pace with no one even close to me (the pack finishes 30 seconds ahead, and another group maybe 30 seconds behind me.  

The 5:16 effort seems like an awful lot of pain - just to shave 4 seconds off the interval I clocked 4 days earlier.  I wonder if I could run much faster at this distance - how much short-distance specific training would help.  If drafting and having more people around me would help. Or would warming up more like in the workout help?  Or perhaps it is just an age thing.   It used to be easier for me to run a 5 minute mile, and any halfway decent junior high kid runs a 5:16.  But still I tend to reject the general mindset that there should be some tight correlation between one's age and the run distance one must race at.