Run Buffs Run!

Nick - the running community, as you may have noticed already, tends to be very friendly and inclusive. So even though the CU team runners may be faster than you, have more experience, and have accomplished more, they would be more than happy to have you run with them for as long as you want are able to.

One attribute of a good runner is that he is sincerely interested in helping others improve. I suppose part of it that a good runner realizes that being first in a weak field is not as rewarding.

I remember racing Mike Kirk this year in the Ogden Marathon. He caught me around 20 miles, and we were in a duel for first. This was a $550 question - the prize for first was $1100, and for second $550, so the winner would get $550 more. He has three small kids, I had four at the time. They ask you sometimes what you are going to do with the extra few hundered dollars you've won expecting perhaps to hear that you are going on a vacation to Hawaii. Our answer was "feed our families".

He was pushing the pace, and I was hanging on for dear life. Finally at 23 I started to give in. Although he could have seen me as a snake that is about to rip the glory of the win and $550 out of his kids mouths, he encouraged me to stay with him for a while until the gap got too big to talk through.

Now if only businesses could learn to compete like this, we would live in a much better world.