~10.87 miles @ ~11.6 min/mi

"Cool glove!" the high-school kid compliments me as I enter the tunnel under Wisconsin Av. My left hand looks like Hellboy's, covered by a huge eye-piercing fluorescent orange glove that I found lying on the shoulder of the road half a dozen miles ago.

It's a Friday afternoon and I've taken off from work an hour early to jog home. I've only tried this journey once before, as described in 2007-05-25 - Home Run Meltdown. That time was an ordeal, hot and slow. Today the temperature is 50 instead of 80, I weigh 20 lbs. less, and I eat chocolate chip pancakes for lunch. So the run obviously goes far better and I cover the distance almost 3 min/mi faster.

Rain varies from moderate to minimal. Earthworms squiggle graffiti on the path. The mile trek from the office to the intersection of Rt 123 and the GW Pkwy yields the aforementioned garish glove. On the hilly Potomac Heritage Trail leaves are slippery but I avoid a fall. Pimmit Run is nearly knee-deep, a muddy flood just as it was at the 2009-11-01 - Potomac Heritage 50k 2009. I wade across with great caution and manage not to be swept away.

After crossing Chain Bridge it's a clamber up the steep path to the Capital Crescent Trail. As I reach the top my GPS reads 3.00 miles. From this point onward the going is far easier and the pace accelerates. A porta-john in downtown Bethesda, placed by MCRRC and the Park Service, is a welcome sight. After a couple of sub-10 miles through Chevy Chase I'm walking up the hill on Brookeville Rd when the phone rings. It's Kate, checking that I'm ok! We chat, and I discover that the phone works fine even inside a waterproof zip-lock baggie.

At home I take a GPS data dump. It estimates 1203 calories burned and reads a total distance amazingly close to my 2007 estimate of "~11 miles".

^z - 2010-03-16