~9.5 miles @ ~9.6 min/mi

Crimson cardinals flit brilliant across the gray afternoon snow near Rock Creek. A lost driver, confused by weekend road closures, stops to ask for directions to the National Zoo. Barry Smith and I encounter almost no cyclists, a few runners, and multiple dog-walkers along Beach Dr as we trek from Maryland down into DC, turn around at Park Police Hqs, and return.

I arrive early and decide to run a few miles as hard as I can, which turns out to be a sprint from the Boundary Bridge parking lot to Picnic Area #9 and back, with GPS-based mile splits of 8:32 ⇒ 8:11 ⇒ 8:16. At the car I take out a windbreaker and add it to the other layers, then stride about until Barry phones. He parks ~2/3rds of a mile upstream at Candy Cane City. We jog toward each other and meet in the middle, then head downstream together. Our splits: 11:17 (including a stop at my car to drop off his keys) ⇒ 10:27 ⇒ 10:15 ⇒ 10:42 (with a pause at a dysfunctional water fountain and the break for Zoo clues) ⇒ 9:35 ⇒ 9:39 and a final half mile at 9:57 pace.

(cf. GPS trackfile, ...) - ^z - 2012-02-02