A Balance, Redefined

Early AM start. Up at 3:30am. Luckily Chad was gracious enough to agree to carpool to the start of the Provo River 1/2. He picked me up at 4am. Once we got to the race and up to the start, we went for an easy 2-mile warm-up. We were told the race would start somewhere between 7 and 7:30. We got back to our gear about 3 minutes to 7am to hear the countdown. We didn't believe our ears with the number of people milling around. Also, because we had chips we weren't immediately worried. However, working our way through the crowd to find no mat at the start had me a little concerned. We started our watches and headed out anyway. I wasn't exactly sure what my plan for this race was to begin with. I had initially thought I was only going to do it as a marathon pace run but decided to let my legs decide. The first two miles were the only splits I got as the mile markers were way off. However, with dodging all the people they still were 5:50 and 5:55. I felt fine there but then Chad and I started pacing together. He completely pulled me with him. Soon we were picking off some quicker miles. Especially after leaving the rest of the crowd behind. Within the next mile or so we could see Bill and Carol. After catching up to them we found out that we were exactly two minutes off from the start. The turnaround also gave me some added confidence that though the leaders were untouchable there was still a race to be had. At about mile 5 Chad pulled away and I did not have much to go with him at that point. I watched him catch up to a guy about 20m ahead and they started running side-by-side. After a little longer Chad pulled away from him and I had a second wind. I went to try and catch back up with Chad but he had put too much distance on me. I ended up picking off two other guys in mile 8 and 10 and coming back to finish 8th overall in a 1:15.31 by my watch. I felt great about the race especially considering the situation. The weather was perfect and the course was scenic (except those last two miles). A good experience and a great confidence builder. I finally am convinced that I'm back in shape after the injury. The good news is I never had serious pain even now two days later… I have to give Chad a lot of credit he really pulled me along and gave me someone to work off of in the later miles of the race. We also had a great chance to talk some, which made the day a great experience overall.