A.M. Total of 12.7. Did a workout with Benjamin. He was finally healthy enough to try the 2 mile tempo run down the canyon. I did not have any particular goal for him, we decided to start out trading quarters and then see what happens. I took him through the first quarter in 84, then he did his in 83, I did mine in 82, then he was headed for around 85 on his, and I did not like that, so I took the lead early and made it 84 to hit 5:33 for the mile. After that I decided he had the ability to break 11:00 if he drafted, so I told him to just sit on me until he was ready to come out, and I took him through the next two quarters in 81 and 80. He handled it fine, and took the lead around 1.5 mark to pull me for the rest of the tempo. I was very pleased for two reasons - one was that I did not have to lead anymore. The other was that Benjamin was showing he was in good shape. We ran the last 0.5 in 2:33 (5:06 pace) and finished in 10:47.7 - my second fastest time this year. Our last mile was 5:14, which makes it for my most negative split in this workout with the second mile 19 seconds faster than the first. Prior to that I had been consistently 2 seconds slower in the second mile. Benjamin is becoming a great training partner. It is a lot of fun to run with your 14-year-old. Particularly when somebody we meet on the trail tries to guess the relationship. A few days ago a runner said to us - why aren't you boys in school? I had him guess who we were and what we were up to. His guess was that Benjamin was in high school and I was 23 years old, married, and in college - after he had observed my wedding ring. With Benjamin he was not too far off, but with me he was off by 70% on the age part, and off by 15 years on the college part, but he was correct on being married. Jenny ran 3, Julia 1, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.
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