energizer bunny

We lucked out. The rain that hit us yesterday—2 inches collected in Tom's rain gauge—stopped during the night and Tom ran the Pike's Peek 10-k race this morning in perfect conditions. I like the race because I can make it to a good parking spot and read the paper or knit for half an hour before it's time to get into position to snap a picture.

The race is run on Rockville Pike (that's Wisconsin Avenue if you take it far enough south), starts close to us at the Shady Grove Metro, and ends in Bethesda at the White Flint mall. The route is basically flat, the race doesn't take hours, and there's lots of food (pizza, chili, beef barbecue, cookies, bagels) and a live band in the mall parking lot after the race. (Has anyone else noticed that at events like this the bands are made up of "mature" males, playing music even I can recognize. Would Matt's band play in a parking lot on a Sunday morning?)

This was supposed to be just a slow jog, still mindful of the marathon on Monday, but all the conditions were good, and instead of a 55-minute run, he came in at 49 min 31 sec, 3rd out of 19 in his age group, and ran each mile faster than the previous. I expect Sports Illustrated will be knocking on the door soon.

The picture of the week? For some reason this one kind of haunts me. There's something eastern European, refugee, on the road following the train tracks west about this. There is no way that Martha and I could have been that tightly buckled and belted without some help. I'm also betting the coat I'm wearing was probably worn the year before by Ed or Jim. Plaid, I am encased in plaid. It may be a good thing that this is in black and white.