Mount Vernon Trail

Potomac Runners had their group run scheduled for 7:15 this morning at Belle Haven Marina, a little park on the Potomac and the Mount Vernon trail, which goes along the southern bank of the Potomac in either direction long enough to get plenty of mileage in.

This presented both a motivation and a challenge, as running with folks, at a time before things heated up too much, would make the run infinitely easier. However I’d also been up with my sister and friends until past 2 am the night before.

But I got it together and pulled into BHM right at 7:15 and could see at least 40 or 50 people milling about. Parking was a bit difficult and by the time I made it to where they were mingling, they had all left. So I started out a bit faster than I usually go and reeled in large groups of people, but never did manage to hook up with anybody to run with.

The Mount Vernon trail is like the Kelly Drive of Northern Virginia. There were hundreds of people out there running, most of them Binghamesque penguin types and many of them running in large groups (gaggles, hordes, schools?). That, combined with cyclists, made for a lot of congestion in spots, but got me thinking that if our great society were ever interested in seriously getting into collective shape, there would be many more scenes like this. And all at 7:30 on a Saturday morning.

I made a command decision to go 16 – 8 out and 8 back. I thought of going for more, but also really wanted to get back to my sisters and take a nap. So I settled for 16 miles, on the condition that I'd keep up a brisk pace. While I did go out faster than usual and got a little faster (front eight in 59:33 and then turned around to do the back eight in 57:27), I couldn’t get the pace down under sub 7. My stomach felt really sick for a mile or so at about mile 15, which was actually good in that it was the final dissuasion to go farther.

Potomac Runners had lots of Gatorade and water on hand post-run at the marina, and I sucked down their liquids but didn't socialize. I also became aware of the sun that now beat down, and (as I knew I would be) was very happy to have got my run in early.

Total with warm up and cool down was maybe 16.3 miles in 2:00:14. Excuse me now while I hit the couch!