Urban Adventure

Now that Emaad and I have decided that we're running the Frederick Marathon on May 3rd, I'm back in the business of doing long runs.  I figure that as of last weekend, I really only had time for 2 of them, a 15-miler and a 20-miler.  I thought this last Saturday would be a great day for a long run, so Mark agreed to run a 15-miler with me.  I even thought up the "course" all by myself (well, sort of ... I decided on the point A and point B and Mark figured out how to get there).  Our urban adventure: Run from Mark's house near Forest Glen to Union Station in downtown DC.

I wake up at 5 am for our 6 am run, and realize with a quick glance out the window that the rain is coming down in buckets!  I call Mark to see if we're still on, and he promises me that it'll stop raining within the hour.  I go with it, get dressed, have my obligatory pre-run bagel and peanut butter, and head down to Mark's house.  When I get there at 6 am, it's still raining pretty hard, and Mark again swears to me that it'll stop soon.  After about 15 minutes of waiting in the car, we decide to just head out, rain and all!  I'm dressed in shorts and a white t-shirt, and I make comments during the first few miles (while it's still raining!) that the people on the metro ride home are going to love me ... Wet t-shirt contest, anyone? :)  Luckily, it did stop raining about an hour after we started and I was relatively dry by the time we got to Union Station.

I'm glad the rain didn't scare me off, because the run was an absolute blast.  We ran from Mark's house down to the RCT, and took the RCT to the MD-DC boundary, running through a small ocean (ok, a big puddle) near Candy Cane City, that drenched my shoes and socks for the remainder of the run.  The course then took us on familiar territory, down Beach Drive by the National Zoo to the Rock Creek Parkway. Pretty soon the Kennedy Center was looming above us, and we arrived at the National Mall.  Once we got down to the Mall, we ran into (literally) the Run for Epilepsy 5K.  We were running directly on the race course!  Naturally, I wouldn't let Mark cross the finish line (even though he wanted to) and we hung a right, ran around the Capitol Building and shortly thereafter, we reached our 15 mile mark, and walked the rest of the way to Union Station.

Pace?  Pretty brisk! We ran the first 10 miles in 1:46 (10:35 pace - just around marathon pace!) and then closed out the last 5 miles in 9:45 pace, for a finish time of 2:34:30 for the 15 miles. Great run, great company (thanks Mark!), and great scenery for our urban adventure!