14+ miles @ ~20 min/mi

At 0450 Caren Jew awaits me at the Clopper Rd parking lot off I-270. Soon my gear is stashed in her car and we're off to Gambrill State Park, where in 2006 on 21 October and 24 December we ran a segment of the rugged Catoctin Trail. We didn't quite make it to Hamburg Rd either time, so today Caren drives us there. Starting at dawn we proceed northward through some lovely woods and past Delauter Rd (52 min) and Fishing Creek Rd (40 min) to the scenic outlook point (45 min) marked "View" on Caren's map, look about, then return at almost exactly the same pace. On the pathway we encounter some slightly-scary looking mountain men (Caren and I are both happy to have each other's company! — we're reminded of the movie Deliverance), a pack of five fast trail runners, and a similar number of off-road bikers. We talk about our favorite songs and books, and I synopsize the plot of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (Dark Lord makes Ring, Dark Lord loses Ring, Hobbit finds Ring, Hobbit destroys Ring). Caren slips on a stick and sits down far too abruptly for comfort, fortunately without major injury. We discover that our pace is only a few minutes too slow to have made some of the cutoffs for the Catoctin 50k. Unfortunately that race is more than twice as long and takes place in late summer when heat and humidity are as daunting as the rocky hills.