Sunday was the big day. I was up early and in a scary livery cab for the 6:15 check-in. I then had an hour to wait around the Rock Center concourse. I was feeling pretty nervous. I had received a Facebook message from JM the night before telling me that JP, who was a friend in high school, has MS, and while I was pacing around waiting for the start I checked status updates and saw one of his saying that he was fighting the MonSter. I found that very motivating. I wasn't going to race with anyone's name on my back, but after I saw that I went over to the name thing table and wrote out his name.
I got into the start corral early, around 7. I was mostly keeping to myself and warming up, but the dude in front of me noticed the Five Fingers and asked about them. We had a nice, nervous conversation. He said he was going to try for 10 minutes and I tried to hide my incredulousness. He also told me about the fire fighter test, which made me think a weight vest would be a neat thing to have. Anyway, we made it to the front of the line. He was off like a shot and I think that eliminated any lingering concern of mine to have a conservative race. I beeped in and took off, in the process failing to hit my watch's timer button. I made it up ten flights or so before noticing this. At this stage I was alternating double and single steps. I quickly realized that double steps would cause me to, uh, die, so I went to singles but kept a very sharp pace. I passed dozens of people. I skipped the first rest stop, grabbed a cup of water at the second, and basically just kept the pace. I was feeling very, very motivated. Some clown in a team t-shirt that I had passed earlier caught up to me in the 60's but I turned it on a bit more and he did not pass me. The whole way I was thinking "15 minutes might actually be possible," but I ended up on top in light snow after only about 13:30. I feel very, very good about the whole thing.
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