My tired old Macintosh iBook is almost ready to go out to pasture (the screen intermittently goes black, the CD-ROM drive door won't latch shut, the letters are worn off of many of the keycaps, and the battery won't hold a charge for more than 20 minutes) so I'm in the process of configuring a new Mac laptop. It's more than twice as fast, has four times the disk space, and cost a bit less ... but there are now the usual incompatibilities to fix, plus the need to transfer old files and get rid of trash ... so meanwhile, some quick notes on recent runs through the woods:

Long Slow Wet Cool

(11 June) — 19 miles, 228 minutes — Paulette is having lunch with a friend in Rockville, so I hitch a ride to near the intersection of Randolph Road and Rock Creek and jog half a dozen miles north from there to Lake Needwood, then turn around and proceed down the trail to Che^z ... along the way I spy a medium-large cottontail bunny-rabbit, a small chipmunk, and a group of four large damp deer stomping through the brush, as well as hosts of dead and dying locusts (cicada noise level is down to "1" on my subjective scale) ... rain and cold weather help tremendously: 16 measured miles along RCT (marker posts 9-14-3) confirm the ~12 min/mi pace (including some major delays in crossing major roads) ... I slow down on the final uphill through Walter Reed Annex ... perhaps I'm too old (or too undertrained) to do this sort of impromptu long(ish) run only 2 days after an 11 miler ... but feet and knees feel fine at the end ... I celebrate with a big bowl of instant mashed potatoes ...

Thunder and Lightning Bugs

(15 June) — 6+ miles, 64 minutes — neighborhood loop, Georgetown Branch Trail to MitP 24 - 23 - 22, then on to Rock Creek Trail 3 and home ... early evening between lines of thunderstorms, warm and humid, only a few raindrops along the way ... both MitP measured miles 9:59 ... no walk breaks, overall a much brisker pace than I usually can manage ... many robins, one heron (or crane?), and several fireflies ...

Ritual Ablutions

(19 June) — 11 miles, 117 minutes — from home via WRx's mermaidelicious fountain to Rock Creek #3, then via MitP 22-26 to Bethesda, and trackback to ^zero along Georgetown Branch, ~8-10am ... measured miles average 10:42 during first part and 10:24 for the final four, including a blitz 9:27 ... no walking, but I do stop at three fountains to pour pints of water over my head, and that plus lower humidity and occasional breezes make the jog quite pleasant ... ca. mile 6 a terrified gray vole scurries across my path, granting me good luck ...

Solstice Purple Line Loop

(20 June) — 4+ miles, 54 minutes — from home to WRx, orbit the mermaidelightful fountain, then walk/jog a hilly zig-zag circuit along the "InnerPurpleLine" trail through the woods, doing my part to keep the pathway trampled down — the poison ivy is scary, both the little shrubs and the giant hairy vines, bigger than my arm, that climb up the old oaks ... dragonflies flit near Rock Creek ... a sudden crack! makes me look up and I glimpse a great bird, 6-foot wingspan, soar away as a head-sized chunk of bark from an ancient dead tree begins to fall from on high ... thornbushes scrape my thighs ... late-afternoon sunbeams stab through the foliage — whenever one catches the corner of my eye, violet afterimages appear and I think that I'm glimpsing purple blazes on the trees ... navigation becomes a tricky game, as I lose the trail at intervals but always manage to rediscover it, though sometimes only after a pause to scout about ...

TopicRunning - TopicPersonalHistory - 2004-06-22

(correlates: 2006-12-23 - Wheaton and Back, NoSweat, NanoRadians, ...)