A.M. Steve Ashbaker the Air Dark Horse rescued me today from having to run 20 miles alone. Decided to take a break from Crocs today, and wore racing flats. I originally wanted to run to Bridal Veil and back, but it was cold enough already without the wind, so we agreed to do our 10.1 mile course twice. We were having fun in the first half. First, we caught the 7:00 guy at mile 3. Then there was a branch on the road. Steve being the Air Dark Horse flew right over it. I being the Low Flying Spy Plane ran into it and took a spill. Only a few scratches, got up and went on, no problems. Then it was time for Russian jokes. Here is the one for today. Gorbachev comes to the White House. Reagan seats him at the piano and says: "You can press any key except that red one". Gorbachev finally is overcome with curiosity and presses the forbidden red key. He gets splashed with ink, and plans a revenge. Now Reagan comes to the Kremlin. Gorbachev invites him to the piano and admonishes him not to press the forbidden black key. He finally gets too curious and presses it anyway. Nothing happens. He does it again. Still no result. He goes to Gorbachev to complain: "This is borning! Back in America...", to which Gorbachev replies: "There is no America." We were having so much fun that we forgot it was time to shift gears into the brisk easy zone - around 6:20 - 6:40, but we did remember around mile 6, and made it to 10.1 in 1:08:58. After that it was time for the tempo portion. I told Steve that a quarter under 1:30 was good, and over 1:30 was bad, otherwise, anything was acceptable, and we got going. At first we were going 5:50 pace, then we even picked it up to 5:44, but then Steve was not feeling good for some reason, so we eased off to 5:50, and then to 5:55 - 6:00 pace. We ended up running the last 10.1 in 59:48, 5:55.25 average. Total time for 20.2 was 2:08:46, 6:22.48 average. Immediately afterwards took Benjamin to the Rex Lee 5 K. Ted and I decided that since Ted was injured, it would be better for me to pace his son James, and for him to pace Benjamin. James ran a PR of 19:25, and Benjamin ran a PR as well, 22:02. I was impressed with his last 200 in 45 seconds. Ran some extra, ended up with 25.2 for the whole deal. James even gave me about a mile in my marathon pace zone.
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