Longview 13.1 photos

    Check out these great photos of Saturday's race, courtesy of the KC Running Company. If you look closely on the left side, you'll see Rafael, me (in the radioactive orangish-pink shirt), and Herschel (one of our pacers, in the blue shirt with the 2:00 sign).

    We're rounding the first curve, and already Rafael has left me as only a blip of neon in the background. I had little hope of keeping up with the Spaniard; I ran a PR... but he ran an even faster PR!

   Here are a bunch of people coming up and then going down the biggest hill in the race. It doesn't look that steep... but looks can be deceiving.

   Rafa proves at mile 11 that he's got this, with a big smile on his face!

   While the Jens are hanging tough, just about 18 minutes behind him. This is our mile 11 shot, just as we're about to kick it into high gear.

    Here's Rafa, smiling even bigger at the finish! (Gun time is shown; his chip time was just under 1:40:59.)

    And here's proof that my smile was as big at the end as it was when I started, with a chip time of 1:59:04... that's 55 seconds faster than I was trying for, and about 4 minutes faster than my previous PR. Herschel told me at the start that we were going to "run it in TWO, TO-day!" and he nailed it. He and Ashley made sure I beat my goal.

   This is officially the heaviest metal I've earned... this thing is about a quarter inch thick. Serious hardware! And as you can guess, I wanted to run this race to get this baby. Awesome design!