7+ miles @ ~11 min/mi

I was going to title this "Blistering Speed", but given the effect that the seam of my shorts had on my inner thighs "Chafing" is more accurate. And if that's the worst problem I have, then I don't have any problems! (cf. NoProblems) Son Robin has a Boy Scout court of honor to attend at St. Paul's church in Kensington, the temperature is in the comfy upper-40's, and I could use a tempo run ... so at 1:45pm I park in the church lot and trot west for Ken-Gar. With a minute or less of walk-break per mile my splits from milepost 7 to 10 and back are 10:59 + 11:03 + 10:28 + 11:03 + 10:10 + 9:52, plus 9-10 minutes before and after. Wheee!

Along the way I get some unexpected respect. Three skateboarding kids pass me northbound at Randolph Road, take a side trail, and meet me again on my return trip. "You're pretty quick!" one says; I demur. Two dog-walking ladies see me near the usual mud-puddle zone south of Dewey Park, and when I re-encounter them almost an hour later one exclaims, "You've been running all this time?" I reply, "Yes, but slowly." And I come back to Earth when I'm at the church and chatting with Alex, an Eagle Scout. He ran his first marathon in 2006, a sub-4-hour Marine Corps, after a long run of only ~12 miles and a training regime of only ~12 miles/week. Kids!

(correlates: NoProblems, NoProblem, CardThatPoet, ...)