A.M. Ran with Jeff and Daniel. It was an eventful run with live entertainment. Yesterday I found out that Jeff and his whole family are very good singers and love to do it. This morning I began to realize the implications of having a training partner that can sing. So I challenged Jeff to sing the Star Spangled Banner at 5:30 pace. We picked up after a bit over a mile warm-up, waited for 100 meters so that Jeff would have a chance to get into a 5:30 breathing rhythm, and then he started. We ended up doing 600 in 2:03 (5:28 pace), and Jeff got a 5 (with 10 being good stationary singing) for his performance from Daniel. According to Daniel he hit about 80% of the notes on key. Jeff thought his singing at 5:30 pace did not sound that good. To help him feel the magnitude of his accomplishment I sang the same song at 8:00 pace. Daniel gave me a 2. I kept changing keys as I went along, something I do even when I am stationary. Then Jeff sang at 8:00 pace. Daniel gave him 7.5. Reasons for not 10 - some notes slightly flat, and struggles with breathing. Daniel turned around at 4 miles. Jeff and I went to the end of the trail and then turned around. Then at 7 mile mark Jeff began to be concerned about making it to class on time. So we picked up the pace, went through a few gears and eventually ended up running 6:00 pace. I became curious about how well Jeff could sing at that pace and challenged him to do it. He gave himself 6.5 on Daniel's scale as we did a quarter in 1:29. Then I tried it. Our quarter time was 1:32. We saw Sarah right as I was finishing "o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave". She gave us an interesting look. Jeff said it sounded worse than 8:00 pace singing as I was changing keys more often, but not much. I asked him if that was because it just could not get much worse, he said no, even at 6:08 pace I was still singing better than one of his mission companions. As Jeff was analyzing my performance, we slowed down to a 1:34 quarter. Once we were done with the analysis, we picked up again and ran the last 1 K in 3:28 (5:33 pace). Dropped Jeff off, ran back to Sarah, ran some with her, then we saw Iain Hunter on the trail. Sarah suggested I should join him, so I ran 5:20 pace for 0.5 while catching up to him and then ran with him some more. Total of 18.1 in 2:16:28. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:13, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:39, 2 with Benjamin in 14:30, and 100 with Joseph in 43.
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