A.M. Not a whole lot of sleep. Last night as Sarah was going to bed she got stung by some poison-injecting creature. We got rather concerned because we could not find the creature. We wondered if it could have been a scorpion. Eventually the mystery was solved when we found a wasp. Dave joined us today for the run. Logan joined us for the first 2 miles, then ran back. We repeated our workout from last week. I debated if it would be a good idea for Benjamin to run this long and this hard in the middle only 4 days prior to the half marathon. From the point of view of physiology it was less optimal. But he needed it psychologically after his adventures a week ago even though he had had a good race on Saturday. He needed a second witness of his ability. I knew that his performance in the half would be determined more by psychology than by physiology, so we went ahead with the workout. We warmed up 5.3 as usual, then started the 3 mile tempo from Bridal Veil Falls. I paced the first two miles. We did the quarters of 84, 82, 81, 83 (5:30), 81, 80, 81, 80 (5:22), then I led for one more quarter in 78. Then Dave had the permission to take over and run as fast as he wanted, and he ran a 77. Benjamin passed me as well and sat on Dave's tail. I was hanging on for dear life during that 77 quarter. But then Dave slowed down to 79, and all of a sudden it became almost enjoyable. In the last quarter I gave it a little push moving closer to the front, and that got Benjamin going. With 200 to go we dropped Dave, and with 100 to go Benjamin dropped me. Our last quarter was 75 for Benjamin, 76 for me, 79 for Dave. The times were 16:01, 16:02, and 16:05 respectively. So it was total of 10.6 for Benjamin and Dave. I ran another 3 to make the total 13.6. 2 of it was with Joseph and Jacob, and 1 with William.
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