Short night of "camping" at our house spent by getting kicked in the head all night by my kids! Nobody wanted to get out of bed so I did the race morning by myself (easier anyways). Few miles of warm up and glad to see at the start a lot of competition. My legs were pretty sore from finally getting in some training this week so after some easy running I did some sets of pushups to get the heart stabilized. After the start a lead pack quickly formed and I found myself just behind them and trailing Ken Richardsen, Dennis Simonatis and Neil Glassman. The pace of this group was around 5:20 so I passed them and considered momentarily catching the lead group of 5. First mile was 5:15, second was 5:05, last mile was 5:30, I think. I could hear someone on my tail at the second mile and thought it was Ken who always kicks my trash the last quarter mile of every race we are in. But the pace felt good today and I wasn't struggling at all with it. Dennis S blew by me just before the 3 mile marker, which was a surprise but I kicked it in and passed him back. Loved the cooldown run with Demetrio who talked old days with me and the long distance training strategy the Mexican marathoners used. He had some great ideas today for me.
Post race was simply an embarrassment. For all runners. As the director was writing out checks a large fight ensued about the college runners accepting money. People were shouting back and forth and the director turned to me and commented that this is why he hates doing prize money. No names will be mentioned here, but surely there must be a better forum for this kind of thing. Dennis went up to the race director afterwards and made it a point to that him for the money. He is just a class act.
I got back home to try and get the kids breakfast before getting them over to see their mom for the day and then get my hill run in scheduled for the day. 10 miles on the Logan Rim Trail which felt great at an easy pace and what a beautiful day! | 