Boyd Hoglund Cup

Our stake has an annual 5K/10K run called the Boyd Hoglund Cup. The ward with the most participants wins the cup and this year our ward, the Alpharetta Ward, lost by one person. We felt so bad because the definition of participant is anyone who shows up and we didn't register Brody:( Anyway, I ran the 5K and won with a time of 23:50! I was so very, very excited when I realized what had happened. There is this awesome runner in our ward and she is 10+ years my senior. I didn't know how fast she was until we ran the 1/2 marathon in Nashville and she came in around 10 minutes faster than me, which is a pretty big deal in the running world. Anyway, my goal throughout the race was at least to just keep her in my eyesight. My time when I started training was about a 9 minute mile and I haven't really seen much improvement in speed, I've just been able to maintain that over more miles. Even when I was running on my own I couldn't understand how I could maintain or even speed up over the course of 6+ miles, but not go any faster on the short runs. I really wanted to see some improvement after 4 months of training, so I was determined to just stay close to the lady in my ward. I lost her about halfway through the race and just kept speeding up trying to find her. We were running on a trail that had a few curves, so I just kept thinking she was going to be just beyond the next turn. To make a long story even longer, she was running the 10K and had kept running straight when the 5K route turned around!!! My neighbor was running too and she could not understand what had gotten into me and when I told her I was trying to stay up with the lady in our ward she then told me that she was running the 10K. I could not stop laughing!!!! I guess all I needed was the right carrot...