An absolutely perfect racing weather day in DC. Woke up, biked to the World War II memorial to meet up with my colleague Mike - we walked to the start line chatting. He used to be really overweight, and a few years ago started biking to work and back, about 30 miles round trip, and lost a lot of weight, Now he started putting it back on, and is turning 30 this year, so he wants to run a marathon - the problem is, we've signed up for 8ks, 10ks, and 10-milers together, and he NEVER trains!!! So, I'm trying to get it in his head that a marathon is no joke and that if he wants to finish without being injured, he needs to take the training a bit more seriously. So that's what we talked about until the race started. I told him our goal was to finish in 30 minutes, 10-ish minute miles, didn't seem hard to attain... it turns out I didn't realize how out of shape he was... We started pretty good, 9:30 the first mile, then he started to breathe really hard and sweat, so I started slowing down a bit... crossed the Memorial Bridge, turned around, had some water, and started the 2nd half to the finish line. I tried to motivate him to go faster but was worried he'd have a heart attack or faint on me, so I didn't push too hard... We finished in 30 min 30 seconds, not bad at all! I think it was a good race to do so that Mike realized how much work ne needs to do before Marine Corps... After the race I met up with a bunch of othe runners, so weird how you can see people you know in a crowd of thousands of people! Then I biked home and met up with Will to go on a gorgeous bike ride to Annapolis, followed by crab soup sitting on a sunny restaurant deck by the bay. Will's kids got 1st and 9th place on the kid's 1-mile fun run. What a fun day! | 