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Throwing a (my 1st) workout out the window

When I left the house last night, I'd applied sunscreen, put on my prescription sunglasses, and appropriately chilled my Fuel Belt bottles because it was sticky humid with a hot sun beating down. It was the first workout of my being back to focusing on running. Not quite yet "on plan" with marathon training, but close since that starts next week. I'd decided I was doing 8 miles though I was debating in my head about that at mile 2 when it ended up being hotter than I expected and I'd already gone through my Nuun.

At about Mile 3, where I usually turn around if I'm doing a 10k run, it got cloudy and the thunder started quietly rumbling. So I was debating in my head what to do. Because of the route I take, if I continued onto Mile 4, I'd be 2 miles from home...or I could turn around and make it and "out and back" to get the full 8 miles if it wasn't raining. At my current location, it would be 3 miles to home. In essence, I was at exactly the middle point when the skies opened up.

The clouds by this point hard turn fairly ominous to the north, but I couldn't tell what direction the storm was moving. There was sun almost everywhere else so maybe it would blow over if it was moving due east? It started as drips and turned into a steady rain at Mile 4 with occasional claps of loud thunder...though, thankfully, the lightning was never to ground. I decided to call it quits and started the 2 miles through our village's downtown. By the time I got to corner where our local bike shop is, the streets were calf-deep with water, I was soaked, I couldn't see well, the tornado sirens were going off, etc..

Arriving at my door, I had to go straight to the shower to strip off my clothes because they were so wet. I'd done crazy-fast splits to get home quickly so my legs were sore. But there was no time to drink a chocolate milk and eat something because before I could clean up I had to go downstairs. Our side yard was flooded (some of the streets were knee-deep by now) and the water was headed over the sidewalk and down the basement steps. Our basement door had calf-deep water in front of it and I held my breath as I opened the wall of water not sure what to find. To my suprise, the seal on the door was working and barely a trickle of storm water had made it into the laundry area. The bikes and strollers were all bone dry, but the other side of the basement where the storage lockers are was not so lucky. The drain there had backed up leaving 2 inches of water over most of the center area and it had started to trickle into the bottom of nearly everyone's locker.

So I tried to relieve some of the water running into that basement by leaving open the door to the side with a functioning drain. Which helped a lot. I waited a few minutes for the rain to slow and the water streaming down the stairs to slow to a trickle. Then I decided it was time to rinse the disgusting, dirty water off me in a shower. Which is always unpleasant when you have to get wet--again--to get clean.

It was just an unpleasant evening all around. The small one wouldn't go to sleep until nearly 10pm and was up in the night (thankfully rare these days). Cole wanted videos before bed instead of books...which is allowed and fine but more involved than picking stories. Not a good start to marathon training though it did feel good to be out running.

BTW, those of you not wearing wool socks...they probably saved my feet from blisters. Get some! My new running shirt that had never been worn even held up well--no chafing.

I'm hoping for a better 2nd attempt...this weekend is a very large downtown triathlon so I'm planning on doing a run along the Lakefront Path before heading over to Queens Landing to watch the action. Not sure I'll stay for the pros, but I do enjoy watching the swim, T1, and the early bike. Which is funny because the swim is my least favorite part of a tri to actually do!