Monsoon run

Today’s run was interesting. The initial plan had been for me to meet up with the usual Dowd crew and lead them over towards Caitlin’s where we would meet her, Aaron and Jay and proceed to do a preview run of the OrthoCarolina 10k course that Jay and Caitlin will be racing at the weekend. However, when I turned the tv on this morning it was clear that running conditions were going to be interesting! Although my neighborhood was perfectly dry, apparently there was a big storm passing over to the north and downtown Charlotte. Sure enough as I drove towards the city there was some pretty spectacular lightning (in the direction I was driving towards!) and by the time I got to the Dowd the rain was unbelievable. Brian was the only other Thursday regular brave (mad?) enough to turn up so regardless of the rain and lightning (both incessant at this point) we headed towards Caitlin’s as planned. Within steps we were ploughing through ankle deep water and I was regretting my decision to wear my new shoes! As we ran along McDowell the combination of ankle deep water, heavy rain, pitch darkness intermittently lit up by flashes of lightning and the cacophony of emergency vehicle sirens made for quite a surreal (and scary) running experience! No sign of anyone else (Jay and Aaron had decided to head indoors to the Dreadmill, Caitlin to sleep out the storm and run later- apparently we ended up missing her by about a minute!) so we decided to carry on and run the normal Dowd loop backwards. Within a couple of miles the rain and storm had eased and it was actually a very pleasant run- the rain a welcome, refreshing change. Just over 9 miles in total, 400s tomorrow, rain or shine…..