double d mountain runner: Rail trail run (long)

I got together a group for a long run from Londonderry to Lawrence on the rail trail last Sunday. I've rarely done long runs over the last decade but this sounded like such a nice idea I couldn't resist. Dan Verrington, Jim Pawlicki and I had done a 17 mile run over most of this trail back in 2014 and I wanted to add in the part from the Manchester airport to the newly paved Londonderry section. It looked like about 20 miles so I threw it out there to see who might be interested.

Ruben Sanca and Dan Vassallo showed up hoping to do a long hard workout. Collin Carrol was happy to run on his own between the two fast guys and the remaining "slow" guys. Dan, Jim, Mike Quintal and I made up the slow group with an aim of 8:00 pace. We had a perfect day with temps in the upper 30's and lower 40's during the run. The guys up front ran 20 in 1:52! We chugged along at a bit under 8's getting it done in 2:36. The trail was in excellent shape except for a couple of very short sections. Big thank you to Greg Carson for picking up our water stop at Windham station and Ruben and Mike helping with transport to the start (and back afterward).