A.M. Ran with Steve and Chad. I did 20, Chad and Steve turned around at mile marker 9 and joined me later in the tempo at different spots. Steve did the last 7, Chad did the last 2. I did the warmup 10 miles uphill in 1:17:15 if you can call that a warm-up, but I supposed you can because the remaining 10 was a lot faster even adjusting for the grade - 58:34. It was humid and started to get warm. I felt I was struggling with the humidity, but decided to just be bold, give it a good push and deal with the consequences. It hurt, but I was not slowing down. It did help to have Steve around - he kept pressure on me and once in a while would take the lead which provided relief. Then Chad chimed in with 2 miles to go and was helpful as well. Steve started running out of juice with about 0.9 to go, Chad made it to the 0.5 to go mark. I was happy that I made some inroads against humidity. Hopefully when I run the Rocket City Marathon this year it would not be a bomb like in the last two years. I need to win two battles - against fall-winter germs and against humidity. Also a third one - against getting older. With turning 40 I gained a new appreciation for the gospel of Jesus Christ and particularly for His gift of resurrection. Without it the life of a runner is rather sad. It is sad even when he is 20, but the full reality of that misfortune does not come until he is older. Without Christ's resurrection a runner has nothing to look forward to as he ages. He will just keep getting slower and slower likely hitting a few years of not being able to run at all before he dies. And he is going nowhere. With the resurrection of Christ he can look forward to a body that does not need to run because it has a superior mode of transportation - although the closest we can get to it in this life without external mechanisms is running. So he is looking forward to discovering a better way to run once this life is over and once a few things happened on the other side that are necessary before the resurrection. Relatively few people realize that resurrection is actually a gift to all regardless of their choices here. The path to it is less painful for those that make good choices, and the place they get to go also improves with the choices, but everybody who is here on earth will be able to move in a perfect resurrected body with the VO2 capacity becoming irrelevant due to having a superior source of energy. Benjamin did 8 including 2x500 pickups on the road - one downhill, one uphill. Down in 1:32, up in 1:38. Julia did 2, Jenny 4, Joseph 3, William 0.5, Jacob 2. | 