This distance is such a lung-buster! It was fun seeing so many friends and I even managed to convince my daughter and her boyfriend to join. I tried to not start too fast and I held it together reasonably well. Surprisingly, I was the fastest guy this time, gradually pulling away from a fast high-schooler who was probably a third my age, lol. I managed to barely beat my all-time personal record for this distance, set on this course a year ago, by about 6 seconds.
This race unfolded in an unusual way. The kid who raced to the front slowed down suddenly at about the 0.5 mile point, in order to adjust his ear pods and his phone! I passed him at that point and took the lead. Another very fast-looking kid was on my heels. I checked my watch every minute or so, to glance at the average pace for the whole race so far. There is a bit of downhill at the beginning, but I didn't want to go under 5:32 or so, and that's about where I hit the first mile.
At the turn-around, 2nd place was maybe 10-15 seconds behind me. It's fun to see all of the other runners in the race, since the entire course is an out-and-back. We encouraged each other. Surprisingly, the kid who led us all at the beginning was walking! I shouted some words of encouragement like "You can do this, man!".
I was breathing really hard. At one bend in the course, I glanced behind me a bit, just to be sure no one was sneaking up on me. There was no one in sight. I had this. Finally, I could see the finish line and I pushed extra hard. Hands in the air! Woo hoo! 2nd-place was about a minute behind me.
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