A.M. Benjamin's chess tournament (Utah Elementary State Championship) . Spent all day there. Benjamin played 6 games, won the first 4, then lost the last 2, and took 12th place out of 92 players in the 5th grade. P.M. I sure thought I'd be feeling terrible after a busy day, and running late at night with a full stomach. Started with 2 with Benjamin in 17:49. Julia ran 1.5 with us in 13:27. Jenny ran 2 with Sarah. Joseph and Jacob ran with Sarah as well. After that it was already 8:30, and I needed to finish the run, take a shower, and read the scriptures with Sarah before 10:00pm. So I ran brisk. Figured 6:40 was the slowest I could go and still get 10 in, so I did just that. I was expecting not to feel well, but quite on the contrary I was feeling great. I wondered if it was the adrenaline from the chess tournament, and it would end after about 4 miles, but it did not. I just kept cruising along at around 6:30-6:35 pace. With about 3 miles to go decided to shift gears to test the waters with the idea that if 6:00 pace felt hard I would back off immediately and run the slowest it takes to get home before curfew. In spite of the dark sub-6:00 pace felt very comfortable, so I just kept going. The tunnels and turns slowed me down more than normal in the dark, and then I had an interesting incident. Two guys with skateboards were under a bridge. As I was approaching them one of them asked me if I had seen anybody. I said no, and then immediately ran into the other that I did not see. So I lost a couple of seconds on that, but was able to get back into the rhythm. In spite of the obstacles my last mile was still a decent 5:48, and the total time for the last 3.04 was 17:54. Total time for 10.18 was 1:04:37.
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