A.M. 20 mile run. Ran with the kids first. Jacob did 1, Joseph 2, Jenny and Julia 3. Then I ran with Benjamin. He did 7. We did 1.5 down the canyon to teach him how to deal with a competitor that is running strong and pushing the pace into the miserable range. The target was 5:20 pace, so 8:00 for 1.5, but he was acting edgy on my shoulder so I thought he wanted to go faster. So we did 79, 77, 78, 79 - 5:13 for the mile. At that point he began to beg for mercy saying: "Daddy, please do not speed up". I told Sarah about this later, she said - "isn't that cute that you have a boy that can run a 5:13 mile and keep going that still calls you Daddy?". I was going to tell him that he could not ask his competitors to do that in a race, but the pace was hard for me as well, I could not say that much. So I eased off to a 1:02 300 (did not mean to ease off that much), and then we kicked, sort of, and finished in 7:52.7. This was a good learing experience for Benjamin. After we finished, we parted ways - he ran home, and I ran for more miles up the canyon. On the way back I ran a 5 mile tempo. I thought it would be easy to maintain 5:40 given how easy the 7:52 1.5 came to me. But it was not so. The first 0.5 or so was easy, and after that it got progressively harder. I still managed sub-5:40 pace going out of the canyon for 3 miles, but once I hit the uphill at the end I was barely breaking 6:00. My time for 5 miles was 28:44 - 5:44.8 average. I felt that the heart was tired and underperformed, so I took measures when I got home - a nap, also got some avocados and almonds at Costco.
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