… Me, But Fitter! The auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers have returned the envelope for the winner of one of the more coveted awards / opportunities on these Interwebs … Guest Blogger at A Marathoner!!! Wooowhooo!! Seriously, I’m flattered everyday anyone not in my family reads my musings, so the fact that I had multiple folks interested in blogging is shocking and heartfelt. Thanks. Ian – I’ll send you an email. To the thousands (ok, less than thousands) who were not so “lucky”, I’ll do the Guest Blogger thing again soon.
After a bit of separation from racing yesterday, I generally feel the same way: mistakes happen and I need to make them now. I would rather go out too amp’d up and risk crashing than going out too slow and wondering “what if I had hit it harder.” I spoke to a chum from grad school who is a marathoner and detailed him on the race and my progress, etc. Interestingly, he advocates blowing up in short races like 5ks. His thesis is that you need to test yourself to the extreme and see how that pain feels when you crash so that you are familiar with it for longer races. While the suffering was profound yesterday, as Running A Life said, imagine if you came to the same realization at mile 13 in November. No thanks. I’ll happily screw up now! 
My buddy subscribes to the Steve Prefontaine view of short distance racing – completely and utterly thrash yourself to death and then do it more. I’m reasonably hardcore, but not that nuts, yet. The way I summed up yesterday for him is that I was awesome for 2/3 of the race (6:37). The last 1/3 not so much. The big positive takaway is that after that 6:15 or 6:20 1st mile, I am pretty confident that I will go sub 6:00 for the Fifth Avenue Mile in September. For that race, I will definitely thrash myself to death!
I chilled out for the rest of Sunday. It was dreary, so I wasn’t missing much at all. Since wifey and I were the only two people on the planet not watching Lost (sorry, never got into it), we watched Inglorious Bastards instead. Great film. Although I am biased. If Tarrantino made a film about paint drying, I would watch and love it. Since the movie ran long (and late), I had no desire to hop out of bed for a morning run. Therefore, I have 8 planned for tonight.
Last thing: weekend shout out time
Washington Ran Here – Brooklyn Half 1:27:42 (age group win)
Runner’s Kitchen – Brooklyn Half PR 1:33:34 (PR) Go CPTC!!