Bret

AM - early - 20 miles.  Drove down to St. Pete and met Richie and Drew at the North Shore Pool at 5 am..  Ran around the Pier for a toilet break and the made our way north through Snell Isle where we picked up Drew's friend Cameron who is in his second year of college at Emory.  We also picked up an acquaintance of Drew's named Scott who was about 15 miles in to his early run.  So we had a group of 5 skinny guys pounding through the pre-dawn hours of the Shore Acres neighborhood.   It was actually quite an enjoyable group with lots of conversation. 

Scott pealed off at 40th and headed back and then we ran up to 62 Ave and stopped for water at the Mangrove Bay golf course.  Continued north on 1st street to Richie's neighborhood where we picked up his friend Steve and stopped at Richie's house for water.  The pace was steadily increasing as the miles rolled on, with both Drew and Cameron happy to run sub 7:30's or better.  I felt good but decided when we picked up Steve to hang back with him and Richie and told Drew and Cameron to have at it.  And they did.  Within 2 miles they were out of sight.  We grabbed some water at Coffee Pot Bayou park and at our cars back at the pool - did a quick loop down the Pier and back to complete the effort.  Richie decided to run a couple more miles with Steve, but I had enough fun for one morning.