Showed up at the start and could not believe my eyes - the battle of the titans was about to commence! I had so wanted to see this matchup, although I could never be there in person to witness the results for obvious reasons, but Scott Keate and Iain Hunter were about to duke it out for Scott's entry ranking in masters next March. I'll leave it to Scott to post the whole story, but since Iain was able to put him three feet under after Scott took the lead with a titanic 4:30 mile 5, I'm going to say that he debuts at a very solid number two. Fortunately his wife and the EMTs were able to dig him up in time and all looks to be well as I write this. I'll also say that I will never be bummed by getting repeatedly stomped by Scott, since it is crystal clear that he is willing to go wayyyy further into the pain locker for the W in addition to being a top tier athlete. Anyway. I have had an odd pain in my right adductor for the last few days, almost as if I kinked it or something. It goes away after I run for a tenth or so but otherwise it is there like an annoying kinked neck. So I warmed up super slowly, got everything shipshape, and went off super easy to make sure that nothing really got messed up down there. I was still with the lead guys, just not so much. Scott and Iain were way out front looking like they were on a fun run, gradually pulling away. I eased down the big hill and settled nicely into a 5:30 or so pace, 5:20 for mile 1 and 5:45 for mile 2. I didn't want to go too slowly though so I started picking it up off the couch. S&I went out of sight by 1.5, never saw them again. The high school kid I was running with hit the wall at mile 4, but a newly minted masters dude followed me and passed me at mile 7, hanging on nicely for what I thought would be third but ended up being second. Splits for 3-8 were 5:35,5:20,5:15,5:10,5:20, and 5:48. Then we got to the nasty part of the course. Just at mile 7.5 at the fee shack, the temperature jumped 5 degrees and the humidity jumped 20%. It felt a little like Iowa again, and I knew that there would be no more speed today. Still though I wanted to try to tough it out but I could not get away with my no water trick in these conditions so I had to walk and drink through 3 aid stations to make sure I got enough to not crash. 9-13 splits were all 6:20, even with the walking breaks. Note that splits are (close) estimates because I ended with 12.98 as the course because the Garmin freaks in AF canyon. We tended to Scott and taped Spencer's heel, then ran some cooldown while waiting for the interminable awards ceremony to finish. It was cool to be on the podium, but I would rather have not done it THAT way...
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