13+ miles @ 11 min/mi

A bat flits around the Rockville Metro parking lot at 5:55am, harvesting bugs from the swarms around the streetlights. "Waiting is the Hardest Part" (Tom Petty) plays on my car radio. Soon CM Manlandro arrives and we set off along the Parks Half Marathon route. A layer of fog hangs over the soccer field near mile 2.2, gleaming as dawn brightens. Groups of deer in the woods pause to watch us pass; a tiny rabbit in the grass by the trail freezes, then retreats. Twinges come and go in my metatarsals. CM notes similar pains in her ankles and arches. My "aid station" is a poorly concealed cache behind the rock at Ken-Gar (mile 5.5). I snag the bag as we pass and sip from a can of Cherry Coke for the next 2 miles. Our pace is a slightly-too-brisk 10:20 min/mi for the first half, so we slow to an average of 11:25 min/mi for the second section. A fast buff fellow passes us in his outbound & then return trips, doing 8-10 miles before taking his son to march in the Kensington Labor Day parade. Sunbeams slip through the trees near mile 9 as we approach the Mormon Temple. Near "Winkler's Meadow, mile 10.7, I stare a deer in the face and it blinks. (It's an allusion to the movie Stark Raving Mad.) We finish a bit under 2:22, a new PR for CM, and walk to the Bethesda Metro for the ride back to get our cars. Farecard snafus are resolved with the help of the station attendant.

(cf. Jog Log for the running journal) - ^z - 2008-09-13

(correlates: Stark Raving Mad, UncleBert, CaveThought, ...)