Don't you love it when ......

Do not underestimate old guys. If you're a young pup and going to challenge us you better be sure about yourself. While Tammy and Cassie were going to lay around in the sand I decided a run on the boardwalk would be in order to try and regain some training I'd lost this week. We were at Pacific Beach and a boardwalk follows the coast all the way south to Mission Bay where my early October triathlon is held. I figured I'd run down to the bay, around Fiesta island and back up the coast to where the girls were. It's a totally flat run so not difficult and my pace was pretty good, around 5:00 or just under. At around 6 km on my way back to where I started the run I came up on another runner, nothing unusual as I'd passed several other runners during the run. He seemed to be pretty fit and what looked like to be in his early 30's but his pace was slower than mine and I passed him and thought nothing of it. Apparently he thought differently because a couple of minutes later he passed me obviously having picked up his pace from earlier. Game on. His pace wasn't much faster than what I'd been running at so it wasn't an effort on my part to keep up and I tucked in just behind him and too his left. After about 50 metres I pulled up even with him just to make sure he knew I was still there and then backed off just a bit. I could hear him breathing a little hard so I decided I would make him work a bit and passed him and picked up the pace. I wasn't sure what he was going to do but he obviously didn't like trailing and passed me again at my increased pace. I repeated the process of running off his shoulder and when I noticed he'd slowed a bit and was breathing hard I picked up the pace and passed again. This cat and mouse game kept up for about 2 km with our pace continuing to increase little by little at which point I was working pretty hard but so was buddy. Something had to give here and I was determined that it wouldn't be me. I could tell by listening to his breathing that he was approaching his limit and I felt I still had more to give. Ok, time to see what this guy had so I started to semi sprint and this guy was doing everything he could to keep up. Just before his lungs exploded he pulled even with me and forced out "Huff ... Puff ... Nice ... Huff ... Puff ... Pace ... Puff ... Bud ... Huff". And I turned to him and determined not to sound tired I took a deep breath and said "Ya, I'm just on my last couple of miles so this is a great push to finish up on". I accelerated for about a 100 metres and then when I knew he'd dropped off I slowed up, a lot, and ran the last half km thinking to myself "Don't you love it when you school a youngster? Old guys rule".