Paul, my friend, as a fellow member of Indy Runners 2.0, you have already heard the rest of your team tell you that you did your best given brutal conditions. And that we were all proud of your accomplishments throughout the day, and your willingness to go big or go home on the last loop. But this Highlight Zone forum is often about going deeper. I can't tell you how to feel, but I can guess a few things. 1) competitiveness - many runners know they aren't going to win, but we are competing against ourselves. We want to run farther, run faster, prove to ourselves that we can meet new challenges. 2) teamwork - each of us looked at the others on our team and said, "they are gutting this out, I can't let them down." 3) denial - sure you had already run a dozen or more miles in brutal heat and humidity, on little to no real food over the course of 7 1/2 hours, but we're not playing it safe now - bring on the long loop! The decision to go long was the same decision any of your teammates would have made just so we could be second place in one obscure category of a crazy race that goes mostly unnoticed by anyone except diehard distance athletes. But it matters to us. So we do what we do. And I want to do it again next year, with Paul Cook.
Paul, my friend, as a fellow member of Indy Runners 2.0, you have already heard the rest of your team tell you that you did your best given brutal conditions. And that we were all proud of your accomplishments throughout the day, and your willingness to go big or go home on the last loop. But this Highlight Zone forum is often about going deeper. I can't tell you how to feel, but I can guess a few things. 1) competitiveness - many runners know they aren't going to win, but we are competing against ourselves. We want to run farther, run faster, prove to ourselves that we can meet new challenges. 2) teamwork - each of us looked at the others on our team and said, "they are gutting this out, I can't let them down." 3) denial - sure you had already run a dozen or more miles in brutal heat and humidity, on little to no real food over the course of 7 1/2 hours, but we're not playing it safe now - bring on the long loop! The decision to go long was the same decision any of your teammates would have made just so we could be second place in one obscure category of a crazy race that goes mostly unnoticed by anyone except diehard distance athletes. But it matters to us. So we do what we do. And I want to do it again next year, with Paul Cook.
Terrific breakdown, Jeff.
Count me in for next year! I should have ample time to recover by then.