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Light jog with a couple kids who are maybe sorta into this sport?

December 29, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Once upon a time in high school I had this dream of a run that would combine the two classic GDS trails, going out Battery Kemple and then link up with Glover Archibald for the return. The only problem was that is looked to be about 9 miles. Then one day when I was a rising senior at St. Alban's summer running, I had the amazing opportunity to lead to STA freshman I'd never met on a run of my choosing. ... 2 hours later, we stumbled into the Cathedral Close, long after all the other runners had left, with our parents waiting for us and one of the coaches having just set out as a search party.

That was the inspiration for today's run!

I knew from preseason camp that Ilana's longest run ever was 10 miles since I was there for it. In fact, most of that run was her, me, and Ana (though I spent the first half of that run listening to the Jeff tell "the story" before I doubled back to join them). I figured that winter break was the perfect time for another record-setting adventure, and who better to share it with that these two goofballs. (i.e. there's no one else I could convince to run almost 2 hours with me without Anthony getting mad). To make the route sufficiently long, I decided to a) have us go out the CCT via River, and b) end with a little bitty detour up Ft. Reno. The look of horror and incredulity on Ana Gunther's face when I mentioned this last minor detail near the end of the run, about a half mile from school, was priceless.

I threw in a couple tempo miles on the way out because, hey, it's good for them, and I kinda wanted to see you fast they could comfortably go. Turns out Ilana can continue telling stories and Ana can continue laughing at them even while cruising at 7:30. A good sign! Also, they both tied or came near their freshman year 5k PR during that the stretch.

The weather was beautiful. The stretch along the canal felt almost like summer since the sun was shining from a clear blue sky. Ana and Ilana were both in long sleeves and long pants, which seemed to recapture that overheated feeling of the August alumni run along that part of the canal. When we finally reached the foot of the Glover Archibald trail, I led us across the mud flats to the Potomac overlook where we always used to stop on our once-a-season full Glover runs when I was in high school. We spent a few minutes enjoying the view of Key Bridge, the islands and rapids upstream, and high Virginia embankment, standing a mere inches above the water, practically the lowest point in the city. Then we headed up Glover toward Ft. Reno the highest point, where we enjoyed an equally lovely vista. Along the way we had to detour around a section of trail by the 5th intersection just under the old railroad tressel that was fenced off for safety reasons. Ana and Ilana were fully in favor of scaling the fence, which, while I don't officially condone, made me very proud of them. That said, I'm still a bit scarred from the first run I ever acted as coach (or more precisely, overly confident sophomore run leader) in which Amandeep "Shuffle" Chabbra cut his wrist on the spikes of the fence around the soccer field we were scaling at part of a Matt Simonson adventure. I think he still has the scar. In any case, being significantly older and marginally wiser that I was at age 16, I realized that scaling the fence was a mildly terrible idea, not only because there were no places where the spikes at the top were bent down or because there were not bars on our side of the fence to help us climb it or because the Zeilinger and Gunther parents had (perhaps unknowingly) entrusted me with the safety of their daughters from contracting tetanus/lockjaw, but because a minor detail that neither girl seemed to have thought of until I mentioned it... how do we get out the other side? Oh the wisdom that years of adventure runs have taught me... It turns out that the fence goes all the way around so we'd have been kinda trapped, not to mention that it was erected for our safety in the first place, on account of the risk of falling debris from the disintegrating railway overhead. After scrambling up and down a couple of slopes, grasping the fence of support in the mud (see photos) we managed to find the trail that other (fool-)hardy souls had blazed through the mud around the closed-off section and shortly were back on track. The rest of the run was uneventful aside from a log crossing over a creek which may not have been the best decision.

On the whole, couldn't have asked for a better run with 2 more dedicated, exuberant high school athletes!