There's this bridge, which marks for most of the town lake frequenters, the end and the beginning of a run. 3 miles, 4 and a half, 13, they all tend to terminate the exercise at this one particular bridge. And it's the obvious choice because there's fresh water trucked in everyday by Run Tex at the juncture. It's beautiful, shady, and there are plenty of good parking spots.

At the end of the 3 mile loop-around, no matter how tired I am, I always like to run the last little bit as fast as I possibly can. It works better when you have somebody running next to you because nobody says anything, you're both kind of just jogging, and you're both thinking about how good it would be to just start walking, but then one starts running a little faster. And then the other one catches up. And people running the other direction, start to look at you. They don't look at you funny, or like, "what the hell?" They just look. And we both have a slight grin on our face. It gets bigger as each challenges with a little faster pace. I always have at least one more gear to use. I can always go a little bit faster. And so can the the guy who runs next to me. I wait for the last 30 yards, and then usually just decide to win. The next gear is always there.

Yesterday, I was by myself and have had this tendon injury in my left knee, probably because of one of these crazy finishes, so I was taking it easy around the last section coming up on the afore mentioned bridge. As I was walking across, I saw a couple. Now, in my 7 or 8 months out on the trail so far, I have not seen anyone else performing these sprint finishes.

And then "boom!", there they were. Fellow sprint finishers. The young man was running, probably ten yards, in front of the girl. And they were both running as hard as they could. To the finish. They smiled at me, but not really at me. They were just smiling when they looked at me because the were using it all up. I mean, why not? You've got to use it up. There's no saving it for later. You're at the end of your race. I loved these people. There wasn't anything more natural for me to do as these expended bodies strode by, nothing more appropriate, than to whisper, "Yes...yes."