This race is getting serious. The bus arrived at the start - I will call it Fort Portapotty. A very imposing and extensive structure overlooking a peaceful valley. Heaven help you if you are downwind. There were so many of them, in fact, that there were essentially no lines. I was a little surprised they didn't put up portapotty turrets, kind of a two-level job.
Anyway I found Brett and the gang and discovered I would be lucky to get sixth place. So much for the cash, but I have been feeling great all week so it's going to be a fun race anyway. The time ticked away, it was a little cold bu not much, and all too soon the start time came. I wormed my way to the front and got stuck in the second row. This would later prove to be tragic for one of the people in the first row.
The gun went off and so did I. Everybody in front was just poking along so I ran through the middle and put some distance on them. 4:58 first mile, feeling pretty good even with the roller in the middle. Brett and the Weber crew finally passed me at about 1.3 miles. He said that he thought I would be wondering where they were. I was :) I tried to stick with them but they accelerated out of range when I had to stop and tie my shoe. It made mile 3 a 5:57. Arg. 2 was a 5:22 and 4 was another 5:22 so I could have stayed pretty close, although I hear that they went 4:40 on mile 4 so maybe not. The flat mile was 5:57, right at tempo pace, so it looked like it would be a solid but not stellar run. The next 5 downhill miles were very consistent, all between 5:48 and 5:53. By this time Eddie Martinez from Arizona was coming back to me, but there was no sign of Sasha's kid. What I didn't realize is that he was running for his license and had to get under 1:10 to get it so there was no way in hades I would ever see him again :)
Anyway I caught up to Eddie and we kept passing each other, sort of a friendly slow motion duel. We were both slowing as the hill ran out (6:04) and then we ran into the gloopy 5k mess and the haunted tunnel, mostly haunted with invisible strollers. Eeek. 6:21. Then the mile with the surpsingly short hill, 6:30, thought it would be way worse. I saw that I had a little more energy than Eddie but he was more motivated when I was in front so I hung 5 feet back from him and waited for the finish line to come into view, where I would smoke him with a brutal 220. Sadly the last turn was only 100 feet from the line! I slammed it hard anyway but so did he and we both crossed at exactly the same moment, almost creaming the dense crowd afterwards. They really need to start the 5k about 15 minutes later. We congratulated each other but later I found the sad truth - he was one of the guys in front of me at the start so I actually beat him by 1.1 seconds. Hee hee. 7th overall, not too bad considering 6th place was over 7 minutes ahead of me and now qualified for a drivers license.
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