~29 miles @ ~15 min/mi

"33 hours!" Janet Choi recounts, in awesome clinical detail, her first ultra: medication-free childbirth. (Aside to her now-teenage son: don't ask!)

JC and I met at the 2013-11-16 - MCRRC Stone Mill 50 Mile Race, where I named her "Tape Girl" based on knee and calf bandages she wore then. Today we're just enjoying the morning, miles behind everybody else, jogging and walking along trails of northern Virginia, telling each other stories, and trying not to fall on rocky patches. Thistles bloom. It's a beautiful day.

The inaugural "Ran It with Janet" fatass/fun-run is a happy Saturday ramble around Manassas National Battlefield Park. A dozen runners begin at the historic Civil War "Stone House", and a bit over 7 hours later half finish the distance, with some venturing off-course or deliberately adding extra mileage to make the course longer. Others stop early.

Janet describes the event as a learning-experiment, possibly a prelude to future races she plans to manage. Meanwhile, it's all good.

Lucas Moten joins me for the final half-dozen miles, which we mostly walk. Janet gives everybody a commemorative wine glass. A blue-haired unicorn stands guard over the main aid station: a folding table next to Janet's car covered with goodies donated by runners. A subsidiary aid station is a styrofoam cooler hidden in the woods.

The Ran-It-with-Janet inaugural course consists of alternating circuits, three toward the west side of length ~6.5 miles each, two toward the east that are ~5 miles per lap. Grass is high in the open meadows. Runners step aside to let horses pass. A police escort precedes hundreds of motorcyclists out for a memorial ride on country roads. Dragonflies with white bodies and square black wing patches flit across the paths. (Band-winged Dragonlet, aka Erythrodiplax umbrata?)

(trackfile) - ^z - 2015-07-05