6.59 miles, 46:20
Today I finally got to run over the Rock Creek trellis bridge along the Georgetown branch trail (also known as the interim Capital Crescent trail). I had been close to it on previous runs and in fact I parked and started from where I had turned around in the past thinking I was far from reaching the bridge. It is not clear how to get to the bridge from below but on the way back it is dead simple. There is an excellent map of the Capital Crescent Trail that I used to navigate to the start.
Now I’m trying to work out how to make this a loop instead of an out and back run. I’d really like to get down to the C&O canal in Georgetown. I could certainly do a loop that involved the metro but I feel self-conscious riding around the metro all sweaty post-run. Plus, I have to admit that since I took a blow to the head while walking alone in Silver Spring from the metro I’m none too excited about running there for any stretch of time. That was ten plus years ago but I’d still prefer to stick the mostly empty trails.
Speaking of head trauma, I should note that I’ve been plagued all day, including the run, by some very odd pain. This pain starts at the top and back of my head and travels down to my jaw. It feels like there is a large spike being driven into the top of my head and my jaw is sore. It could be a migraine but it comes and goes. It was happening before I ran and it came back about half way through so I stopped and walked for a bit. It could also be dehydration as I’ve been doing a poor job of hydrating after the usual holiday celebratory drinking. It would not have hurt to bring along my water bottle today. I suppose it could also be something bizarre like brain swelling, a parasite (if you watch the doctor drama “House” apparently this happens all the time 
), etc. Who knows. I’m taking two ibuprofen and hoping it goes away (but noting it here in case I keel over tomorrow from a tumor induced seizure and “House” needs to solve my case before it is too late!).
On the technology front, the perl script I had been using with the old forerunner to split routes by day doesn’t seem to work with the new 205 model and thus no map image for today’s run. Therefore I’ve posted the run to trail.motionbased.com which is the companion web site. Garmin has yet to release their Training Center software for the Mac but, they had said they would do so during 2006 back in January. Hopefully the software will be announced during MacWorld which starts in ten days. I might be able to fix the perl script but it looks like GPS Visualizer will also split the file. I’ve been using GPS Babel to pull the Garmin XML files off of the new forerunner so I’m no longer dependent on my work Windows laptop (in fact now I could probably return that paper weight).