Midnight Monsoon

Training week 6 is off to a wet, ugly start. For those who may have grown up in a military family like myself, the term SNAFU comes to mind. It all started when my wife pulled out of the driveway Friday morning for a girls’ weekend, leaving me at the mercy of my kids and the puppy. The challenge was figuring out how to do my 18-mile run on Sunday. The solution didn’t work out so well.

I knew my wife wasn’t getting back until around 5PM Sunday. 6PM Sunday was the start of a daddy/daughter dance for my little girl’s Y-Princess tribe. I figured with the dance, followed by getting the kids to bed and some stretching, best-case I’d be getting my run underway around 10PM. Not ideal, but I was pretty intent on keeping the Sunday run on Sunday. So, after a day of lawn mowing, house projects, kid wrangling, puppy chasing, and daddy/daughter dancing, I got underway just before 10PM. I was dragging right from the start. The first couple miles weren’t feeling good. Then, in the distance, the first of the lightning appeared.

By mile 5 I was dragging enough that I slowed to a walk long enough to down a Gu and a fair amount of water. At this point the wind had picked up, the lightning was getting a bit more insistent, and the first of the raindrops were wetting the pavement. By mile 6 I was feeling better, but the weather was going downhill. Just as I crossed mile 7 the dam burst, and the rain started coming down in sheets. Hard enough that the water was running in rivers down the gutters and the sidewalks. Hard enough that I could no longer see. Hard enough that the squirrels and rabbits were forming into pairs and crossing the path in search of an ark.

It looked just like this ..... at least the rain did

My run consisted of 2 times around an ~9-mile route, and although I was tempted to keep going and gut out the full 18, I ended up turning around at about 9.5 miles when my iPod was no longer lighting up, and the sound was barely audible. I also had my Garmin on, and the rain was coming down hard enough that I was worried about it as well. By the time I got home I had managed to get 9.94 miles done. After stretching, drying off, hanging up the gear to dry, and doing some Google research on wet iPods (always a gamble including the term ‘wet’ in a Google search – never quite sure where the internet is going to take you), it was almost 1AM. Set the alarm for 5:30AM to knock out the remainder of the run, which I did this morning (8.03 miles), and now I could really use some sleep.

Not sure where I’ll end up with the iPod. It still seems to play music ok, but the screen is REALLY dark. It’s currently in a container filled with uncooked rice to hopefully draw out any lingering moisture. It would appear the backlight isn’t lighting any longer. Kinda like ET, only completely different. I’ll leave it in its hyperbaric rice chamber for 24 hours, and see how it’s feeling for tomorrow’s run. That may turn out to be an expensive 10 miles.