"It's at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys."
- Emil Zatopek
6:00 PM - Ew. Temperature of 86 at the start. So humid! After work I zipped home and got changed and then picked up my friends Will and Jeremy at work. Jonny was there too, and Jonathan from work got a ride with a couple of his friends to the race. Drove over to Wilton and registered. I knew it was going to be a hard run today, as all day at work it was miserably hot. I was sweating at 8:30 this morning when I was putting out remainders! Walked over to the table and signed in and then got ready for the race.
WARM UP: No one really wanted to do a warmup except Jonathan and me. We jogged a .5 mile warm up. Went out to one of the corners of the course and back. It felt good. We talked about race plans. I told him to go for it, and that I was just going to try to do a respectable time as I do not do well in the heat. Weigh in before the run was 191 pounds (185 after!!). Did .5 mile warm up in 5:06 (10:12 pace). Stretched afterwards and got ready.
THE RACE:
MILE 1: (7:29) Went out conservatively until the first hill. Thought Jonathan and Jonny were far up ahead, but then I heard Jonny come up alongside me, so I pushed to stay with him. Chatted with him a bit. It was nice. He hadn't run in three weeks so we didn't know how it was going to go. Cruised along stride for stride. So cool to run with my younger bro!
MILE 2: (7:53) Some hills in this mile that really take a toll. Could feel the tiredness in the legs from the longer runs the past couple weeks. Jonn told me to push to stay with him so I tried to stick with him as long as possible. Passed the same young man that I passed last race and we exchanged some words. I told him great job! He's doing great, and he said "Hey! This is the same place you passed me last time!" I responded, "Yeah, but it will be much harder for me to beat you this week!" (He ended up only finishing about :15 seconds behind me in the end.) Going to look at the race results to learn his name so I can talk with him next race and get him to push to stay with me :).
MILE 3: (8:00) Ouch. A tough mile. I pushed to stay in contact with Jonn, but he ended up beating me in about :30 seconds. Just didn't have it today. Just don't have the speed I used to have, although I wasn't really tired at the end and went for a cool down, while almost no one else at the race did that. So that was a small victory in and of itself for me anyways. Jonathan ran 10th place (21:48), Jonny I think got 14th in about 23:30, and I was 17th in 24:01. Will ran 27 and change, and Jeremy ran nearly three minutes better than last race in about 32 and a half minutes. We moved down to the end to cheer him in, and it was nice to see him beat a decent amount of people! I'm sure he will beat 30 minutes in the next race!
Total Time: 24:01 Total Distance: 3.10 miles Average Pace: 7:44
COOL DOWN: By myself. No one wanted to do a cool down. Jonathan and his friends left to go home. I went out on the road by myself. Felt good, but then I heard cat calls and I was expecting Jonny and them to be making fun of me and whatever for being an "overachiever", etc. etc. I turned to say something and saw three punks on bikes. I say punks because they kept saying stuff to me and I was getting prepared to mention something about how they would do well to show some respect to other people if they wanted it themselves. They passed me and were weaving in front of me in the road show boating and then sped off. I had a surprise of my own. I kept plugging along and eventually caught up to them, much to their surprise. They turned and sped off as I stared them down with my sunglasses. It's interesting that I can run a long while at a slower 8:30-9:00 pace, but the sub 8:00 pace seems to wipe me out! Total cool down was 9:38 for 1.12 miles (8:38 pace average).
Total Time: 38:44 Total Distance: 4.72 miles Average Pace: 8:12 | 
