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10 miles of awesome

August 24, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
For the first half of the run, listened to Jeff Elias tell "the story", a ridiculous and rambling tradition handed down from Griffin to Tristen to Matt Ishimaru to Jeff. I think I ended up telling most of it two years ago on a Wednesday run at Mackemie. I won't say what the punch line is, but I will note that the story can be extended to however long the run is, in this case 65 minutes. Fortunately, I jumped ship at half-way and joined up with Ilana and Ana who were adding on after the rest of the girls turned back (to be fair, this was the plan Mark and I had worked out ahead of time). The Poropotanks (Ilana and Ana had the honor of bearing that venerable name this year) were supposed to go a total of 91 minutes (91 because Ilana told me 90 was her longest-ever run), but I decided we should go all the way to the bathrooms that were past the next mile marker. That way it could serve a landmark for the top runners in future years to strive for. The whole run ended up being 10 miles as a result, the same length as the loop around the reservoir at Mackemie that I'd run with Jernst, Alex Samaha, Sammy Klein, and Emily Vogt 5 years ago one of the most memorable camp runs ever. This run, too, I think will stick in my memory for a long time. It's been amazing watching these girls improve and mature as athletes over four years, and so it was extra special to be there for the last run of their last preseason camp. Ana says I ran with her on 5 of the 8 runs this week, which is probably how many times I ran with her when she was a freshman. Part of the reason is that there not all of the coaches can keep up with these superstars (and I've often not been in shape to keep up with the group above them) but the bigger reason is that this class for seniors are just such a fun, enthusiastic and talkative group of runners that who wouldn't want to run with such a pack!

We managed to cut the pace down from 10 minutes a mile to 8 on the way back, with Anthony joining us to kick it in for the final mile. I wiped out on one of the rocks as we walked back through sawmill creek and cut my hand, but managed to hide it until we'd reached camp a few minutes later. When got to the top of the hill we jogged the last few meters into camp, glowing with pride. (No one saw, since everyone had already gone in to breakfast, but it still felt pretty badass).