MDay-56 -- Sun. July 26

New week, the last before the bike trip (which is going to mess things up a bit, but bouf). Met others at D&D as usual: Bill, John and Nick, with Jay there for advice but still not running; also Maddie and her dad appeared. The latter two decided to run by themselves, using the track; I had an almost 12 miler mapped out, and the other three agreed to try it. Goal was more than ten miles, but low hill component (this one has about 300ft). Rail trail down to NoLib (at the underpass), then follow that road all the way down to Bardwell, to go left and follow that down to the three way intersection with Michael Sears and Pine; back up MSears, and then cross 181 and continue to Sabin, up to Cordner and then 181 all the way to town. Slow first section, then Bill and I moved ahead a bit, as he needed to stretch out. After the uphill on MSears, John caught up with us, and we stayed together until we hit 181, where we saw Nick had followed Cold Spring and cut ahead of us. I then pursued, towing the other two, and we were all together briefly, before Bill and I pulled on ahead again, working a bit on the hill up into town. Then straight back to D&D, and the young lads came in a minute of two later:

Time: 1:33
Distance: 11.85 miles
Pace: 7:51s

Comment: A bit risky to do this with no stretch, but spend a good portion of the p.m. barefoot in Holland Glen stream, getting a cool massage -- very therapeutic! During the run we got one sub-7:00 mile in, without any big downhill, so despite the overall easy pace, this was a good workout.