5- miles @ ~11.6 min/mi

Since I still can't drive, kind Christina Caravoulias picks me up at my home and gives me a ride to the Rockville senior-center where today's MCRRC Jingle Bell Jog 8k will start and finish. She's a race volunteer, and I do my part by testing the club food & drink. Jim Rich takes photos of all and sundry. Fast runner Pete Darmody chats with me about trains, sound effect phonograph records that we remember from our youth, and classic-rock musicians. CM Manlandro appears, as does Wayne Carson; we visit until almost time to start. Then, outside in the chill, I find Christina and her friend Houra Rais whom I met two months ago at her comeback race. We run together comfortably along the course of bikepaths and neighborhood streets with splits of 0:10 (to cross the start line) + 11:07 + 11:30 + 11:17 + 11:54 + 11:35 (the final 0.97 mile). The MCRRC annual meeting is uneventful except when Wayne wins a door prize. Don Libes and his daughter Kenna race about the parking lot playing keep-away/tag and joking with passers-by.

^z - 2008-12-19