I signed up for this race to run in remembrance of my good friend Jared Budge who passed away a year ago. After being fairly still, sore and hips not working particularly well since my race Saturday, I had intended to take this one fairly easy. I got there pretty early, which was a good thing since my registration didn't seem to make it onto the list. They got me put on and I did a couple miles of very slow warm up. Had a few sciatic twinges and was pretty nervous that my legs weren't going to hold up. I ran into Jared's wife Monica and a couple of their kids, as well as a few old co-workers that worked with me at Verizon Wireless, which is where I had worked with Jared, before the race to say hi and chat for a few minutes. It was awesome to see them all again. They were all running the 5k. Toni showed up to run the 10k and we lined up together pretty early and had a few minutes to chat. There were a couple of BYU track guys standing next to us, one of whom is running nationals next weekend so he was taking it easy. The other one wasn't. The 10k started a couple of tenths farther back from the 5k, so we had to make our way around and through the 5k crowd after the race started, that was pretty entertaining. I started off fairly easy, Toni headed off in front of me, and the faster I went the less I felt any of the pain or soreness I had been feeling, so I kept pushing the pace. My Garmin conveniently showed my heart rate at 212 for the first mile or so, so that was pretty useless. But Toni wasn't putting any more distance on me so I figured I must be feeling ok. About mile 2 the course is climbing through American Fork and I caught Toni going up the hills and gained a little on him. At mile 3 I asked the aid station guy how many were in front of me and he said 2. I could see only one guy way off in the distance so the other one must have really been moving. As we hit the cemetery with about 1.5 to go a couple of younger guys blew by me whom I guess were running the 10k, just not sure were they suddenly came from at this point of the race. The last couple of miles is a nice down grade so kept up the pace. With about a quarter to go Toni caught up to me and began to pass me. So it turned into a sprint to the finish between as he would gain a little, then I would gain a little. I'm pretty sure we came across the finish line at the same time. It was great to race with Toni again. He is a great training partner. I'm just guessing at this point that I ended up 5th overall and first in age bracket. I never saw them post results anywhere. Toni and I ran a 2 mile cool down and almost had a helicopter land on our heads. It was a great morning to remember a great man and a good friend, and to see some old friends again.
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