Rhett

My internet at home has been down since Friday, so I finally snuck in to work this evening to post my race report. 

First, thanks for all the suggestions for costumes.  I ended up using Paul's suggestion, and not the soccer uniform.  I really wanted to run with a cape, so Captain Underpants it was.  After a nice warm up mile with some freinds, I stripped off the shirt and sweat pants, revealing the super large whitey tighteys I picked up the night before at K-Mart over my running shorts.  Then I put on the red cape I made out of some extra material my wife had laying around.  After a few shocked looks, someone finally said, "Captain Underpants!"  and everyone seemed to love the look.  I had a few people tell me I should sport it at every race.  I think I definitely got more cheers than anyone else and as I was approach the finish, my wife said someone said "That is my eye doctor" and the finish line people started yelling through the bull horn, "Go Dr. Underpants!"  One lady in our ward was there and she couldn't look at me, but all in all it was fun to let my guard down and be silly.

Anyways, to the race.

After sizing up the group, there was one guy I knew would beat me.  He runs for Arizona State.  And there was one guy I didn't know that looked like a serious runner sporting his racing flats.  Everyone else I was pretty confident I would beat.  We took off, and sure enough the young college kid was off like a rocket.  I went out easy with the rest of the group and was in the lead until about the half mile mark, when the tall skinny fast looking guy moved past me.  Normally I just run my own race and try not to let others paces affect me, but I decided to go with him.  The pace was a bit faster than I hoped, but I decided I would stay with him as long as possible. 

This course is difficult in that it drops about 400 ft in the first mile then climbs about 100 ft to the turn around, then back down that 100 feet and up the last mile 400ft.

At the 1 mile mark we were at 5:38.  I was breathing a bit hard, but hanging on right behind speedy looking dude.  We hit the turn around at 9:10 and I was finally settling into a rythm.  We came back down to the 2 mile mark with the split at 6:28.  I could tell he had backed off the pace just a touch after the turn around and my confidence raised.  We ran side by side from the turn around back.  When you hit the last mile there is a very steep hill.  We moved up side by side.  Then it levels out just a little for about 50 yards before the last steep hill.  As I approached the hill I decided I was going to surge when we hit the hill.  I gave it every thing up that last steep hill and he didn't answer.  I had about a 6 second gap.  Now I just had to finish out the last 1/3 mile on about a 3% incline without him catching me.  I continued to press all out and he never closed the gape.  I finished in 19:40 for 2nd place and he finished in 19:46 for third.  First place was 16:40.  

It was really fun to race a race against another runner instead of the clock.  I talked with him afterwards and he lives in Kingman and is coming back in 3 weeks for the Turkey Trot on teh exact same course.  I'm looking forward to racing him again and hopefully cutting about 40 seconds off the time to match last years Turkey Trot.

When I get my computer at home up and running I'll post pictures.  Just hide your children.  They are PG-13.