Here's my excuse: I slept from 4-6:26 a.m., awoke clung to a hypoglycemic dream in which I fucked the girlfriend of a Ouachita Baptist baseball player in a high-dollar Arkadelphia hotel, inspired I believe by a three-hour read of Underworld (including a description that rung to me of Chris Vratil; "It was not easy keeping pace with Sims. He had the plodding force of an ex-boxer who still has reserves of deep endurance, oil reserves, fossil fuel—he had calories to burn, sweat to yield in abundance.").
I finished third among men aged 50-54, in 24:54, with splits of 7:59, 7:59, 8:06, and 50 seconds for the final roughly 10th of a mile. They gave me a nice plaque.
About halfway through the final mile I considered quitting, backing off to an easy jog, but before I bridled my effort, a man named Harold Hayes I passed near the two-mile mark said, "Pete, don't look now, but you're about to be passed by three good-looking girls."
"Tell them to come on by."
"Would it be all right if I just drafted on you for a while?" one said.
"Be my guest."
They charged by and opened a 10-yard gap. But they stuck there. It seemed odd. Something about that and a thought of discomfort endured on 1000-meter repeats combined to offer ballast and an awareness of a chance to break 25 minutes. Not that I cared, indeed was a little embarrassed, I accelerated and retook my position and pulled away to the finish.
I got a nice laugh over this; about two minutes into the second mile, as we crossed a 15-foot-wide bridge on the Murray Park River Trail, a grouchy 60-year-man disguised as a rainbow trout on a $6,000 bike rode into us and said, "Get out of my way."
"You could say, 'Please,' " someone said.
"Wow, a bike rider being a dickhead," I said. "You don't see that more than all the time."
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