~6 miles @ ~21 min/mi

"Look! Two dimes!" I proudly show Caren Jew the coins I find on the ground two miles into our journey this morning on the Catoctin Trail. Profit!

A few hours earlier, Mary Ewell picks me up from home. We meet Caren at the Exit 10 parking lot at ~7am to carpool north. It's Mary's first visit to the Cat and we pick one of the gentler segments, between Hamburg Rd and Delauter Rd, for the intro. A dozen or more runners plus a handful of mountain bikers zip by us as we cruise, with intervals of trotting on "embarrassingly runnable" sections. Caren and I reminisce about all the good times we've had out here, including:

• our debate over who would win in a fight between Hello Kitty and Sponge Bob
• our legendary (in our minds, anyway) Catoctin 50k 2008 race, in which we made the cutoffs for the first half, got hailed on by a passing thunderstorm, and escorted the friendly sweepers to the finish line only half an hour late
• our various other (mis)adventures on the trail, beginning at 2006-10-21 - Catoctin Trial and most recently previously on 2011-10-09 - Catoctin Trail with Caren — far too long ago

The Catoctin 50k race is coming up in three weeks, so this is a great preview and refresher to ~20% of the course for me. Several of the other runners whom we meet plan to run it. Alan Gowen, president of the Virginia Happy Trails Running Club, greets us on his outbound and return trips. He has finished the Cat 50k eleven times, which puts him in a tie for third place on the all-time list — wow! Others who pass us include a pair of cheerful young ladies in brightly colored compression socks and a fearless woman who, when we admire her faux-denim running skirt, flips it up to show off brilliant orange spandex shorts underneath. Her gear, she says, is from INKnBURN. Fancy!

Runkeeper and Garmin GPS data agree to ~1%.

^z - 2013-07-24