I continued running for the rest of the summer and during the first semester of my freshman year of medical school.^[1]  My training was limited because of the large class and study load that year.  A classmate of mine, Matthew Sprunger, was also a runner.  We never trained together but talked about running often and compare training runs.  His training mileage surprised me.  Since my training runs were about four or five miles, it came as a shock when he told me was doing twelve- and thirteen-mile runs.  I could hardly believe it when he told me about a twenty-mile run he had done.  Because of my naïve understanding of training, that kind of mileage seemed almost superhuman. 

Sometime during the fall of the first semester Matt and I signed up for a race in Crawfordville, Indiana, a marathon and a half-marathon.  Matt planned to do the marathon; I thought he was crazy.  I did the half.  Because it was a longer race, the marathon with Matt took off before the half.  I started out at a comfortable pace at 7:00 minutes per mile.  The course was out-and-back through the cornfields of rural Indiana.  It was a hot day and I soon felt the effect of running too fast in the heat.  I was reduced to a walk on my way back to the finish.  My finishing time was 1:35:11 (7:19 mile).  The only good to come out of this race was the lesson I learned about pacing in the heat.  Matt finished his first marathon but he, too, looked terrible afterwards.  It had been a tough day for a long race at both distances.  I was humbled.

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^[1] Even though I was an Indiana University medical student, I spent the freshman year on the Purdue Campus.  It was Indiana University’s way of expanding the size of the class.  The follow three years were at the Indiana Medical Center in Indianapolis.