Chris - 4.5

Decided on the drive down to Eugene that I felt like doing another mile time trial before the summer season ended. So Zack, Luke and I did a little warmup run out on the Amazon bark trail loop for about 14 mins, then back to the South Eugene HS track to do strides and bust out the 1600. Luke loaned me his track spikes to wear instead of my comparatively heavy trainers. I was tentatively shooting for 5:30, and thinking I'd have to keep up with Zack since he guessed his PR to be about 5:25. Strong wind on the track. Luke was obviously ahead of us two the whole time, but the first lap we were about the same pace as him. Zack was in the wrong mode on his watch at the start, so I was calling out our splits to him. First lap - 1:19, a little fast. The wind was in our face the whole back stretch, so that was tough to power through, especially on the third lap. I experimented with running that back 100m on my toes instead of the normal heel-to-toe, hoping it would make me push through the headwind a little better. Going into the final lap I had a good couple steps on Zack, but as we entered the back stretch going into the wind I could see his shadow creeping up on me. I held him off decently enough, and then with about 200 - 100m left it was ON. At the 200 we were definitely pushing it, but the final stretch we were neck and neck, both sprinting as hard as our bodies would let us. So much fun trying to hold him off with everything I had while Luke was yelling at us from the finish line. Crossed the line at 5:31! And Zack barely edged me at the line. We were both really happy with our times as we ran our ~14 min cooldown, and went home to go get food and commence the drinking festivities!