After spending 9 hours starting and completing online government in the span of 24 hours, I was pretty spent last night. I woke up and my neck hurt, I think I slept on it wrong. Had a small breakfast and went around looking for my short shorts and racing Saucony shirt. I couldn't find it anywhere, it turned out my mom threw them in the washer. Put them in the dryer for a few minutes, and drove to the start of the race. I found Mason almost immediately, and we did a mile warm up and a few stretches. I heard it was 19 degrees, and I believed it. I took off my sweats and got on the starting line, but the announcer droned on for an eternity. My shirt was still a bit wet, and my legs felt frozen. The officials countdown from 5, and we're off. A lot of younger kids sprinted the beginning, but by 400m in Mason, Kedric, Christian, and I have a bit of a lead. Mason was taking the pace fast, so I decided to pack with Christian and Kedric for a bit. At almost a mile in there was a U turn, and I didn't want to get pushed on the outside so I got in front of the two of them. I picked it up a bit, and hit somewhere between a 5:35-40 for the first mile. The cold was way strong, I can't even explain it. I could see Mason was only maybe 50-75m ahead of me, so I picked up the pace. I hit the second U(about the halfway mark) with Mason about 10 seconds ahead, Christian maybe 5 seconds behind, Kedric trailing him. Mason heard me behind him and threw in a hard surge. I picked up the pace some more and at the 2 mile mark I caught Mason. He told me there was only a mile left, so I passed him to get the inside of the final U. With maybe .8 miles left Mason surged again and caught me. I said something like "let's go" to him and he said okay, and we ran together until there was a half mile left, and I started to kick. Mason yelled at me to win it, and I was gone. I ran 18:21, Mason ran 18:30, and Christian ran an 18:40 something. The conditions were pretty bad for the race, there was like 15 mph winds, but I'm happy with how I ran. This was the first race since time trials where I was able to think somewhat clearly about something that didn't involve pain and/or slowing down. Kedric got 4th, and Austin got 5th. Mile cooldown with Mason. We cheered for Kedric and Austin during it, I didn't realize how far ahead we were until I turned around after the race and saw Mason and Christian were the only two on the 800m home stretch. Another cooldown by myself after. I won 75 dollars so it was a good day.
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