A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 2.5 (easy before AP Physics), William 0.5, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph and Jacob 2. I did a pickup for 2.25 in 13:04- 5:48 pace - over the rollers to catch up to Sarah, then ran with her. She did a total of 3. With Benjamin getting a bunch of AP tests at once instead of one every two months or so I remembered a Russian joke back from the Soviet days: A man dies. He has lived a sinful life and is condemned to hell. However he is offered a choice - the socialist hell or the capitalist hell. He inquires of the difference and is told that in both hells he will have 30 nails pounded into his back every month. The difference is that in the capitalist hell he gets one every day, while in the socialist hell he gets all 30 at the end of the month. After some thinking I realized also that Benjamin was subjected to a form of cruel and unusual punishment on Saturday having to run 3000 alone on the track in Park City at 6770 feet at 1:30 pm with the sun shining bright and clear above him and the air temperature of 75F - not a lot after 6 PM when sunlight is indirect, but earlier in the day it is not pleasant . Well, I knew that, but I had not quite thought it through and had not felt the depth of it. But it was good, because it pushed him to the limit psychologically, and revealed some things about his aerobic conditioning that would not have been so apparent otherwise. And he did run 10:10 and now has a respectable and official 3000 meter time. P.M. Benjamin ran 1 back from the AP test. Later in the eventing he and I went for an easy 4.5. Both of us were having stomach problems, but we each had a different mode of issue. He was throwing up small amounts of liquid, while I had diarrhea. He felt worse than I did as my emissions were more effective. We remembered Bob Kempainen in the 96 Olympic Trials. It is rather symbolic that the KemPAINen has PAIN in it. My kids know this story (throwing up while running 4:55 pace at the end of a marathon), as well as the one about Lasse Viren falling but still winning the Olympic 10,000 in 1972 with a world record, as well as they know the one about the wolf and the three little pigs, and others of the kind - and you can guess why. Sometimes they struggle when they run, and when they are younger, they complain. When they are older, they just recall those stories and draw strength from them.
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