Mental pacing

Couple of weeks ago, I was at a conference in Madison, WI, and the president of the organization tried something new and organized a daily morning run. On one of the mornings, I joined the group of runners in front of the hotel where the president was staying, and we all headed down to Lake Monona, to the southeast of the city. Once we got on the trail that went around the lake, one of the runners said the pace was too slow, apologized, and ran ahead. I asked what's his training pace, and it turned out to be one and a half minute or so faster than mine. I hesitated for a moment and then decided to try and see how long I could keep up with that pace. What then happened I found quite interesting and really showed how key is the mental part of running. For the first 5-10 minutes, I was definitely breathing harder than usual, but I actually more or less kept up without too much problem. As the time passed, I kept waiting for my legs or lungs to want to quit. But, the legs just kept on going, one after the other. I was even able to get out a word every now and then, in between the heavy breathing. It wasn't until some 35-40 minutes later, after we'd gone around the southwestern end of the lake, turned around, and started to head back to the hotel, that I said to my running partner, you go ahead, I need to slow down a bit. So, basically, with the pacing from my faster colleague, I did the middle 35-40-minute part of the ~65-minute run at my tempo pace, way longer than I've ever done a tempo run; and I ran probably my fastest eight miles in training!