A.M. Easy 10.1 at 5:10 AM alone. Dark the whole run. Started out at 9:00 pace. Quickly progressed to a bit sub-7:00. With 1 K to go decided to catch the 1:10:00 guy. Let one horse out of the barn, that got me up to 6:25 pace. With a quarter to go let another horse out, that got me going at 5:50 pace. Total time was 1:09:53. Battled with Murdock Travel about the certificates. The root of the problem is that I am trying to defeat their scheme to profit off top runners. They gave me $50 certificate in 2004, $100 in 2005, and $100 in 2006. I lost the one from 2003, now I do not miss it as much, and I got booted out of top 10 this year just barely, so nothing from this year. They give you those token certificates that are in essence worth nothing if used one at a time. You can beat their price by more than the value of any one certificate by shopping on the Internet. I am fairly certain they did not intend those certificates to be used this way. So they are saying that normally those certificates are valid for only a year. But mine did not have an expiration date, so I was piling them up until I could use them all at once.
You think getting a reward for running fast is just a matter of running fast. No way! You have to call people and bug them. Almost like the Salt Lake Marathon. Yes, and if I ever win St. George, instead of a trip to Japan I'll ask for a trip to Springfield, Missouri or Huntsville, Alabama. It really bothers me when I place in a race, open the award package, and find a discount coupon, or some other deal that requires you to spend money. It is not so much that I want that product for free, a lot of times I do not want that product at all, even if they paid me to use it. Here is what bothers me - you've worked hard, you've trained, you've pushed yourself in that race, you've sacrificed to reach a certain level of performance only to find out that the best that business could do to recongize your work is to try to make a little bit less profit off you that they would off their regular customer. P.M. 1.75 with Jenny in 17:11. Then 2 with Benjamin in 16:47. Then 1.05 with Julia and Jacob in the single stroller in 10:30. Then 3.6 without running kids, but with Jacob in the stroller in 28:22 (7:53 avg). The pace varied depending on who I was running with. First I caught up to a guy named Brian. He was going about 9:00 pace, but I did not mind, figured I'd run with him for a bit and chat. Turns out he likes the trail so much he comes down all the way from Alpine to run here. Then I turned around at Geneva Road, and headed back. Ran about 0.05 and saw Daniel Allen, our new blogger. Turned around and figured I'd add a little bit with him. We were going around 7:20-7:30 pace. Then with 0.5 to go I turned to go home, and he continued on the trail. Total of 8.4 for the run.
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