Two weeks out

A lot of things happened on today's long run. Hopefully I'll be able to remember some of it.

Pat was trying to run 22 miles and I was planning to go 16. He talked me into 18 so I met him at 7am with Justin. We ran through Mary Washington and the new catwalk to loop up to Matt's and pick him up at 7:15. Then we headed down to Alum Springs and towards Lafayette. Coming back into town across Blue & Grey, Pat wanted to make the light so I accelerated. I turned around and Justin looked like he was running for his life behind me... arms swinging high and face pained. It terrified me! I let him pass and we all easily made it through.

Next we went up into the Cemetery at the end of Sunken Road. I don't think I've been there before, so that was pretty neat. It was a nice view of the town. We ran around the perimeter and I went through a huge spider web. I saw it as I was going into it, and there was a huge spider on it. Matt and Pat said that it was really big and Matt started swinging at it to get it off of me. The incident lasted probably a millisecond but I had spider webs on me for the rest of the run. We got some Gu after the cemetery and Justin headed off to church for the first time in years.

Next we went through down from Hanover and passed a bunch of portapotties. Downtown smelled overwhelmingly like poop. It was disgusting. Capital Ale House's Octoberfest left a fowl stench around the town. I'm sure the church-goers were pleased with that on a crisp, fall Sunday morning. We crossed the bridge and went to get some water at our new favorite water fountain in Chatham. Matt decided that we should bush-wack our way through the old path to White Oak Road, but we ended up just slowing down on unsafe footing and high grass. I guess we did avoid the bridge, though we ran along the train tracks and underneath the bridge, along a fence next to Army Reserve stuff and then finally onto Deacon.

I must admit that I'm finishing this post on Friday, 9/24, and I barely remember any of it to go into great detail.

We ran out the train tracks path across Harrell Road out to the Leeland train station. I took another Gu and we headed back down Leeland to Deacon. Pat tried to be a hero by picking up the pace but he kept dropping back. At one point he tried to squirt his water bottle onto his head and missed, hitting me in the face instead. I was startled, to say the least.

We stopped at Chatham for water again and then came straight up William Street to finish the run. There was a big puddle of vomit outside of the bike store... probably fun someone having the appropriate amount of fun for an Octoberfest celebration. Pat fell back pretty far going up the long hill on William Street, but he finished a champion nonetheless.

Afterwards we went to IHOP and got Rooty Tooty Fresh N' Fruity. Fortunately they had a table outside because I smelled... but less so than IHOP did.