I know I said "no more half-marathons until TOU 1/2", but I'm making an exception for this... it was an ALL-AMERICAN FUN RUN for crying out loud! Fritz told us about this race a couple weeks ago... it's something of a tradition for his family, and apparently the race has grown from about 20 people to probably close to 400 this year (between the Kids' 1K, 5K, 10K, and HM). It was an awesome, low-key, fun community event. You could almost call this a trail race. The course was a rolling jeep road/trail at ~6500+ feet with plenty of hills. I was thinking that Fritz and I would run ~1:20 and easily take the top two spots... but there were some other very good runners there and it turned into quite a battle. Elijah Armstrong (a high-schooler who ran 14:28 for 5000m on the track a few weeks ago) stuck right on me until the very end, along with Jacob Howell (who only fell back a tiny bit over the last two miles). I had no idea who Elijah was at the time, but I suspected he was very fast because we were moving a really good clip for that altitude/terrain, and he was strong all the way. It came down to a kick, and I should have known better to wait until the last 75 meters because he got a jump on me and I wasn't able to match it... he won by a full second. There was a little incident with a stroller at the end but even if that didn't happen I think Elijah had it all the way. He really impressed me... the kid is the real deal. I was pleased with the effort. It was a great aerobic tempo run type workout, and I came away with a nice chunk of gold coins. Mostly it was just a really fun day with Andrea, Amiee, Fritz, and his family. Fritz's nephew ran the Kid's 1K and the girls all ran the 5K. We had a great time, so thanks Fritz for letting me know about this race and inviting us up to Montana for the weekend. Course Profile (yes, I actually wore a Garmin just to get this!)
 Elijah taking it in the final stretch
  
Trying out a GIF file...
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