That sweet competitive spirit

Yesterday morning as we were running, we were about to begin the ascent of Meadows Drive, a nasty hill that is half-a-mile long but climbs at a rate of about ten percent. Just then, a male runner in his mid forties passed us like a rocket and began his ascent in front of us; we exchanged greetings and voiced our admiration for his obvious stamina. A few minutes later, he was walking up the road, evidently consumed by the steepness of the hill and not able to carry on. As we passed him, he acknowledged that it was our turn and as we did, we started “to press the pedal on the metal” and did our utmost to increase the space between us and the walker. As we reached the crest, we noticed that he had resumed running albeit now a quarter of a mile behind us. We kept going all out in the downhill section of our course and kept the pace all the way home. The man managed to stay behind us, but was never able to catch up. We felt great, exhausted and our competitive spirit had won the day.