Mini-taper for the track meet at BYU (Robison Invitational) tomorrow. Ran easy 7 miles with a couple of tempo pick-ups with Eric in the morning. Had quite a bit of fun running with Benjamin and Jennifer later in the morning. Towards the end, we passed a rather slowly moving excavator. Have you ever had to pass an excavator while pushing a stroller with a 3-year old, and pacing a 7 and a 5 year old at the same time? It was during their kick, so we were going about 7:00 pace by then, and that excavator was coming to us fast. We managed the maneuver, though, and hit 9:01 for the mile. Ran to the Stake Priesthood Leadership meeting because I was late and also to get some always on the run miles in, and also back to make it somewhat on time to do my hometeaching. Total of 9.5 for the day. College track meets are probably as close as it gets to racing in Kenya around here, perhaps even better. If tomorrow's meet is like the others I've seen or heard of, the poor guy who runs 16:40 will finish last get lapped by the winner in front of a crowd. With that time, he'd be able to win probably 75% of all the 5 K around the country, and place somewhere in the top of the pack in others. But in a track meet, there is no pack of joggers to beat, and to make things worse, there are a lot of people watching. So my goals for the meet. Not to get beat too bad by the college runners, which includes not finishing last, and not getting lapped. If somebody like Bryan Lindsay or Josh Rohatinsky shows up, this could be a challenge. They could do 14:30 even here at altitude. In that case, to avoid being lapped, I would have to run at least 15:45. I also want to break my track PR of 16:19. I've raced only once on the track before since coming to the US, and it was raining hard that day, and the track was wet. So this should be too big of a challenge, hopefully. But most of all, I want to be able to run strong and relaxed start to finish, not have any laps slower than 79, kick in 73 or faster, and determine the strengths and weakness my training has given me so far this year. | 