A.M. Total of 10.5. Benjamin did 3, Andrew and Logan 5, Jenny 4, William 0.5, Joseph 3, Jacob 2. Drove to Cedar City with Benjamin for the Utah Summer Games. P.M. Benjamin ran 800 in the Utah Summer Games in 2:16.25 missing the official Utah State Youth record by 1.74 seconds. The official record belongs to Eli Oftedal and is 2:14.51. However, the Utah Summer Games record is listed as 2:11.00 by Sam Hoyal in 1993. I contacted USATF about the discrepancy, and what we were able to figure out is that in 1993 Utah Summer Games was not sanctioned by USATF, thus the record was not official. Regardless, I was happy with Benjamin's performance. The temperature was 100 F. When we got out of the van I told Benjamin he would gain an appreciation for J. Golden Kimball's "If I had a choice to go to St. George or to hell, I'd go to hell". We did a trick though. We brought the vehicle with the best A/C system of the ones we own. So Benjamin sat in the van until it was time to warm up. He jogged for 5 minutes, then did 2 strides. Back in the van to cool off for 5 minutes, and out to the start of his race. They combined the Youth division with everybody younger, and the other heat had everybody older. This was unfortunate because that resulted in Benjamin running alone.
His opening lap was 65.5, and he closed with 70.6 on my watch - 2.16.1 total. Official time was slower likely due to automatic timing which is always a little slower than hand timing. Ironically, our blogger Eric Lambert who is 15 and with whose family we are staying ran the race as well in the other heat and finished in 2:16.29 with the opening lap of 62. Had they been in the same heat we might have seen Eli's record go down with them duking it out in the last 200. The good news is that they are scheduled to run in the same heat tomorrow. Later in the evening I ran 5 miles with Eric.
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