10 miles @ 9.3 min/mi

Come Mile 4 we get hot. Caren Jew peels off her zebra-striped arm-warmers and I roll up my sleeves. The stirring speech Shakespeare wrote for Henry V echoes in my head:

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."

We're no band of brothers, gentlemen in England aren't abed, it isn't St. Crispin's Day, we haven't shed any blood, and we don't bear wounds or scars—but we certainly are battling, or at least running hard!

Early this morning son Merle drives me to Gaithersburg, where he's now encamped in a Starbucks playing online wargames with a party of German adventurers. Caren picks me up and together we ride to Seneca Creek State Park for the 5 and 10 mile MCRRC Turkey Burn-Off races. CM Manlandro arrives a few minutes ahead of us. We register amidst a chorus of "Who's your Pacer?" banter from fellow runners (to be explained another time!) and then return to Caren's car for warmth. "M-m-m-my Sharona" plays on the radio and gets stuck inside my head for the next 10 miles. I've had worse!

Huge crowds turn out and delay the race start by several minutes as they register. I donate my copy of the book Sub 4:00 to announcer Lyman Jordan to award as a trivia contest prize. Caren and I trot the first 5 miles together at a brisk conversational pace, chattering with one another as I catch up on news after a month of solitary confinement. Two deer amble through the underbrush at mile 3.1 (the "Deer Loop") but there's not much other wildlife, excluding crazy runners. Then Ms. C-C peels off for home and I attempt to catch up to Ms. CM, who has built up a 5 minute lead but now begins to flag. I throw on the coal with a succession of sub-9 miles but can't quite do the job, finishing 1:33:19, about 35 seconds behind CM who PRs today by many minutes.

(cf. CrispinCrispian (2001-10-25), ...) - ^z - 2008-12-04