Thanks, Abby

Had a good run today for the Twin Cities Marathon 10-miler. Not quite a half-marathon, but 10 miles is nothing to sneeze at. It was warm today, and a good breeze from the south. Not the best of conditions for running. I finished in 1:40:13, which is about the same pace that I did the Bjorklund at.

The 10-mile course is actually fairly hilly, compared to the Bjorklund; it goes down to the river and back up, and then along the length of Summit Ave, which has some hills of its own. As it happens, that's the way I run home from work, so the hilliest portion of the course was pretty familiar.

Molly, Laurel, and Bea came to see me just past mile 6, after Fairview. It was very nice to have some family support out on the course!

But I need to explain the title. Coming down to the finish, I was maintaining my comfortable half-marathon pace. And then this young girl, late junior-high or early high-school age, she comes blowing past me about 200 yards from the finish. In less than a tenth of a second, one thought and one thought only came flashing through my brain - "we can't have that!" So, I sped up and kept pace with her. She sped up again. I sped up to keep pace, looked over at her, smiled, and said "You're gonna kill me!" We were weaving around the slower runners to sprint to the finish. As it happened, she finished a second ahead of me. Turns out her name is Abby Hegland, and she's a 12-year-old kid from Eden Prairie. I'd have finished a good 10-15 seconds later if she hadn't (unintentionally) helped me find some more gas in the tank at the end of the race. Thanks, Abby!