~14 miles @ ~13 min/mi

"It's all over except the crying!" Maura deMouy offers a new mantra for the final fast segment of a long run. We meet at KenGar where Barry Smith & Rebecca Rosenberg & I are setting off for half a dozen miles along Rock Creek Trail. Maura joins us as we hear of Rebecca's Marathon du Medoc last weekend. For the last stretch Maura and I pull each other along at near-race pace — whee! Then she heads off to pick up her young sons, Rebecca decides to do a few more miles, and Barry gives me a ride home via Donut King.

Backstory: I leave home at 6:15am; jog via Kensington, startling two rabbits in a front yard; take a detour when it seems I'm ahead of schedule; pause to photograph luminous sunrise-painted cirrus clouds behind barbed wire fencing; still arrive early, so proceed upstream (Barry overslept and texts that he is coming later); answer Gayatri Datta's phone call and turn back to meet her; run a few miles with Gayatri, then join Barry for a couple of hill repeats, pulled along by a passing freight train.

Runkeeper and Garmin roughly concur.

^z - 2013-09-30