Maryland Trip
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This past weekend, I flew up to Rockville, MD to hang our with my dear friends, Mike and Peggy and their 13 month old son, Jack. Peggy and Jack picked me up from DCA, and then we went to this great Thai place with Mike next to his work in Crystal City. Jack has gotten so big and cute since the last time I saw him in person. He is such a wonderful combination of Mike and Peggy.
After some eating some delicious food and throwing the rest on the ground, Jack’s favorite activity, Mike went back to work for a few hours and Peggy, Jack, and I went back to their house to play with all his cool toys. We build a small “Little Tikes” slide in their living room and Jack loved it, although he liked to walk up the slide and come down the other side. Later that evening, we picked up Mike from the Metro station and had a nice dinner at a Lebanese place.
Saturday I went for a nice 6 mile jog on an incredible wooded and paved trail right next to their house. Afterwards, we took Jack to a birthday party at a really neat indoor playground area that had a sand pit, firetruck, ambulance, legos, and all kinds of other toys. After that, we spent the rest of the day biting our nails watching the too-close-for-comfort UT game. In the end, with Jack’s support (see picture above), the Horns pulled out a win!
Peggy was very thoughtful and found a really nice half marathon to run on Sunday that started right by their house! I had searched the web for a race to do this weekend, but obviously not hard enough b/c this race was perfect. After 2 miles on big road, the route ducked in the Rock Creek Park trail system that is really quite scenic as it winds through the forests surrounding Rock Creek. The 2 miles on the road and a wave start prevented the trails from becoming too crowded. This race was well thought out. The weather was perfect with temps in the 50s and I ran hard.
It was great to see Mike, Peggy, and Jack cheering me on at the finish where they helped to push me to a new PR by 30 seconds with a time of 1:37:11 (7:25 min/mile). This race had some serious competition as they were actually paying $25-50 for the top 3 finishers in EACH age group! I’ve never seen this done before! I came in 33/107 in my AG, and the top 13% overall. Not too bad for a spur of the moment race.
Overall, I had great time catching up with Mike and Peggy and playing around with Jack. A perfect weekend!
More pictures here.
