10:00 AM - The Day Has Finally Come. Mr. Griffin gets to show his RUNNiN' LEGS to the BArT kiddos. We got on the bus this morning after homeroom and rode up to Shady Pines. The kids were so happy to have a day outside of BArT, and with my final grades submitted, so was I. If there is one thing that I have come to realize, it is that middle and high school students (especially at a school with no sports teams) have little to no concept of distance running. From the comments like, "Oh Mr. Griffin you ONLY ran 20 miles? I run that at gymnastics practice!" to "I run a 4:30 mile in gym!" to "Yeah I ran a 15:00 5k last weekend" - - and yet I kind of feed into their false sense of accomplishments, as I don't want to be 'that guy' that says, no I know for a fact you did not run 20 miles, or a 4:30 mile, and that running a 15:00 5k in high school is darn near impossible. So what they also do not realize is that despite all the miles I have logged, I do little to no speed work, which correlates to slower leg speed and hence slower short events. I told them realistically that anything around a 6:40 mile for me right now would be good. Before the race my main two competitors dropped out opting to play volleyball and touch football instead (I think they feared the Griffinator!) The race was organized around the access road, and I was planning on doing Vibram Five Fingers, but changed at the last minute when I realized we were not on grass. The race was set to begin at 10:00 . There were two divisions, teachers and students. With about 2 mins ago, I revealed my "short shorts" and immediately the comments started: "Woooo eee Mr. Griffin! You're out of dress code!!" "Put them back on! My eyes!" "You can't be serious!" I told them to just wait and see. The race consisted of three loops staying to the right of the orange cones they placed. I really actually liked the course! Kids have already started posting pictures and most comments are nice, though some people have said that I look "fat" in them. Blah! I need to lose some lbs! THE RACE: The first lap I started mid-pack. I let the "rabbits" go, because I knew that many kids have not learned the lesson of pacing yet. In addition, my legs were shot from Sunday's Race. I didn't know what to do so I didn't want to go out too fast and utterly die. There were about seven students ahead of me and three teachers. I locked into a 6:30 pace and hung with one of my 9th graders, Joe. We ran most of the lap together. I started to pick people off towards the end of the first lap. Moving into the second lap I left Joe and started pulling back another student Dalton. Aidan was still ahead of me (both 9th graders) and I caught Aidan going into the last 150m of lap 2. Lap 3 I started to push it. By now people had started turning out and cheering me on and I will admit that it was a somewhat surreal experience. I very rarely win any type of race, let alone a race against high schoolers, but this was nice! I pulled away and was by myself. I ended up holding the lead all the way to the tape and felt surprisingly fresh, despite my dead legs in the beginning. The rest of the day I spent playing volleyball and basketball with the kids. My juniors ended up beating Mr. Wheat's advisory which was not expected at the beginning. We ended up losing the next round but we still had a blast. Got on the bus and headed home. I got sunburn on my face and arms! Ow! It was overcast in the morning so I forgot to put it on. Classic rookie mistake! 6:00 PM - Later tonight I did a 4 mile recovery run on the treadmill. I did it in 37:00, about 9:15/mile. Felt really good considering the race today and on Sunday.
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