I feared the verdict of the watch, where I either lost the race against time that day or would lose it soon by making the record even harder to break. The time trap had snapped shut.
The natural urge when running a distance is to push harder and finish sooner - to race against time. Every second behind a deadline is a little defeat.
Speed eventually neared its peak. The records forced me to work ever harder to drop a less and less time. These time trials came to feel like races, which are fun to run sporadically but not daily.