Birthday Non-mile

Decades ago, some of the guys I ran with liked to run a timed mile on their birthday ("The Birthday Mile") - to help document the ravages of ageing, I guess. It always looked pretty unpleasant.  Not being in shape to push myself hard for a whole mile, and not wanting to prove that I couldn't even run a seven minute mile, I decided to see how fast I could run for a short distance - like 50 to 100 yards.  I jogged over to my local community college track, mostly because I knew I could attempt to run fast there without any witnesses like I might have on a road or sidewalk - the track is almost always deserted. When I got there, I did a few laps of jogging with some semi-"fast" running thrown in to get warmed up. Then I ran a few near-sprints (not wanting to shred anything in my legs), timed and measured with my GPS watch.  I ran 50-100 yards 5 times, with plenty of rest between. I felt like I was going at least 15 mph in the short sprints even though I don't have anything even resembling some spring in my legs. It was getting dark so I jogged home to get enough light to check the results on my watch.  The watch said (and I've been told "The watch don't lie") that my top speed was only 12.2 mph - I think that's about half of what fast guys can do. The good news is that it's the fastest I've ever run as a 64 year old and I've got LOTS of room for improvement. Time for pie.