20 miles along the banks of Antietam Creek, where I was camping while researching the battle at Sharpsburg. My great great uncle marched his troops from Harpers Ferry to Antietam during the Civil War, so I decided to run that route as a way of perhaps attempting to commune with him. As an exercise in communing it was a failure (what could be further from a soldier’s slog–burdened by rucksacks, feet wrapped in scraps–than a modern trail runner’s caper down a well-groomed towpath?), but as a run it was amazing.