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Golden West mile... Page 2 of 2

Bobby Curtis uses 56.59 (F.A.T.) final lap to go from this...

... to this! Not bad closing speed, huh?

       Curtis admitted afterward he was "not fresh" after spending the latter part of the week watching the nationals, then wittling away his time playing "ping pong" in the dorms in the days before the race. "I was like 120-2 for the weekend!" Curtis gushed later.

        Once the race hit, Curtis was content to drift off the pace early on, but shifted a gear with 360 meters to go, then slammed down a higher gear with 250 to go, where he began reeling in Carl Moe with ease. Moe caught himself looking back several times on the last lap, surely sensing Curtis' patented closing 'strike' was about to occur.

         "I knew he was coming, then I looked back and more and saw him closing... I was like uh-oh," said Moe, who had strung together a great final two months of the season to rank among the nation's elite distance runners. A third-place finish in the loaded Arcadia Invitational 3200 was sandwiched by a rash of 4:0-somethings at the  1600 and mile distance.

         Moe's preparation for this meet was hardly textbook either. He graduated on Saturday night, then took the red eye. His plane from Washington arrived on Sunday morning at 1 a.m. From there, it was off to the hotel (they opted not to stay in the dorms), where his family's rooms were made available to others, since the hotel assumed the Moe party was not going to show as it was deep into the night. "They finally got us a smoking room, and they made us wait an hour or so until it aired out, because it was pretty bad," Moe said. "It was the only room they gave us... five people in one room. Not the best situation."

         It could have been worse. Most of Curtis' allies try going to bed the night before... only to just lay there in a cold sweat.   ;-)

         Both Curtis and Moe said afterward they were "shutting down" for the season, opting to skip Junior Nationals and recover from the challenging previous months instead. Moe was off to get some sleep. And Curtis? "I'm going to play (Nike rep) Josh Rowe in ping-pong. They say he's good.... We'll see!"

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