P Frickin' R!

The IBM 10K was a tough race for me because it was hot and humid. My previous PR for this race was 56:28.
I think we went out a litte fast at the beginning and by the 4th mile I
started to get stitch and my breathing was a little labored. Brian kept
encouraging me and giving me mini pep-talks as we went. It was
around mile 5 that Brian and I discovered we'd been running with the
Govenor for the last couple of miles. When I run races I like to pick a
person out of the crowd and keep them in my line of sight and try to
keep up with them. In this case it was a big bald guy in a red shirt.
It turns out he was the Govenor's protection. I had been wondering what
he had stuffed up the back of his shirt and when it finally dawned on
me that was the Gov. I realized the bald dude was packing. At
mile 6 I was ready to hurl and was starting to wish I could walk. Brian was
saying encouraging things to me and suddenly so was the Govenor and his
crew. He told me "come on, roll with it... you're on an island...." and
as I visualized my island I said "ohhh, I'm on a hammock with a Corona"
and the Gov. said "and your cabana boy is there", and I said "oh boy!
(clicking fingers) bring me a cold towel!" and the Gov. and his crew
laughed. I guess I must have gotten a momentary spurt of energy from
the visualization of B, my cabana boy bringing me a cold towel and sped
up a bit. Then the Gov. and his crew laughed and said "see how you sped
up at the mention of a cabana boy?" to which I replied "that's all it
took!" and off we went.
The Gov. and his crew passed us about 50 yards from the finish line, I guess he was thinking of his cabana boy, too ;-)

My race time: 53.34.

That's almost a full 3 minutes improvement!

A BIG FAT THANKS to Brian for all his encouragement!