About a quarter-mile into a 5K this morning — my first race back from injury — I passed Haitian Olympian Moise Joseph.  The race was to benefit orphans in Haiti, and he and a few others were there to meet with runners.

As soon as I passed him, I started crafting this post in my head, thinking I would follow up that information by stating the obvious: If he ran at my personal-best pace, he would probably barely break a sweat.

I clicked through the first mile at 7:10, a pace slightly slower than my record but ridiculously fast for how out of shape I am right now.  About two minutes later, my joke became all-too-real when Joseph came up next to me and we had a nice conversation.

CH: “You aren’t even sweating, come on!”
MJ: humble laughter

We talked about the weather, and how he was expecting it to be in the 70s (it was more like 50), but that it was actually really nice for a race.  He asked me if I was shooting for a particular goal time and I told him I was just coming back from injury and hoping to finish with no setbacks.

“Oh perfect, getting back for racing season.”
“Yeah, feeling great so far.”

He wished me luck and jaunted off in a way that only the ridiculously fast can pull off, disappearing from my sight in no time while looking as if he were barely trying.

My last two miles were slower (8:04, 7:54) to finish in 23:57, but given that I struggled a bit through a two-mile run the other day, I will certainly take that.  I signed up for this race literally two days before I hurt my knee and thought back then there was little chance this would be much of a successful run.  But it was great, and I can’t wait to get out for the next one in a month or so.

Happy running.