~10 miles @ ~11.2 min/mi

Girl in an eye-catching lime-green shirt crosses the Wooton Parkway and trails me for a mile. Young Asian guy salutes as he blasts by on a long hill. Falafel and hummus and fatoush lunch again remind me, as they did on 2012-06-14 - Home to UM for Concert, that indigestion during a long hot run is no fun. At 5pm I'm in downtown Rockville and meet Paulette who just arrived with the car from home. She's got a special Library Board meeting that won't finish until after dark, so I get to spend a few hours trotting around before driving her back — yay!

Quick-change in the library bathroom, let the GPS get a lock, and head south down Rockville Pike to join the Millennium Trail at First St, the mile 5 marker, after precisely 1.00 miles on the GPS display. Begin by thinking "12 min/mi", but at first it's hard to go much slower than 10 min/mi pace.

Then the heat and humidity get to me, and walk breaks commence. Take off a minute to recover every 5. Then more. And more. A pair of cyclists curse a car that doesn't pause for them when they're about to cross a side street. My 20-oz. water bottle is empty and I'm sucking fumes after ~5 miles. Walk up anything that feels like a slope. At mile 6.75 the Community Center, Millennium Trail mile 0.0, offers a chance to reboot, refill, and drink for a few minutes (while the timer keeps running). Then back along Gude Dr, past the road construction project, to Rockville Pike and southward past Montgomery College back to the start.

The Garmin GPS trackfile gives mile splits as 10:02 + 10:01 + 11:14 + 10:30 + 10:57+ 11:02 + 13:24 (including water stop) + 12:03 + 11:36 + 10:36 plus a final 10:46 min/mi fraction. Zig-zag around the parking lot block to make sure the total is 10+ miles.

^z - 2012-08-31