The Storm that Passed Us By

My alarm went off at 4:15 and I groped around the house getting ready to leave. I had worked all night Thursday, read that as - worked from Thursday morning until Friday evening without sleeping and knew that this long run would be a struggle. Friday evening I could barely get my pizza eaten, lay out my running gear and drop into bed by 9:00. Because I am used to getting only 5 1/2 hrs. of sleep a night, I woke up at 2:30 and had difficulty going back to sleep. I ended up praying for a friend of mine who was grieving the recent loss of their adult child and dozed on and off until the alarm went off.

When I went out to the car, I was shocked to see raindrops and lightening in the sky. I debated about running but decided it would most likely pass over and headed out the Starbucks at 96th and Riverside. When I got there, Mary was checking the radar on her iphone and we decided to wait and let the storm pass. We didn't get any rain while we waited but we did see some lightening strikes.

We headed through Jenks at 5:30 and enjoyed a slight breeze and a little cooler temperatures. We did 5 miles through there and refreshed ourselves at Jenks Park. We headed out to the Creek to tackle some hills. The Harvard hill about did me in and then the one after it is like a slap in the face. The rest of the way to Yale isn't too bad and we stopped for some water and Gu. The route between Yale and Sheridan has a hefty hill and we plodded on to Memorial. Mary was running strong and I was really dogging it but I managed to keep running and I was grateful for that. At Memorial we visited with a cyclist who has run 28 marathons and had just done the Seattle marathon in June. He had run Chicago 3 times, Boston, New York and was running Big Sur.

The 3 1/2 miles back from Memorial wasn't too bad and my Garmin registered 12 as we completed the downhill part of the Harvard hill. Whew, I was glad that was over!

Since it was 8:30 we headed over to Riverside 5K to see Marv, Maryanne and Marolyn fiinsh and when we got there, they were already done. Maryanne had a PR and won her age group, Marv won his age group and Marolyn came in second, yea to you all for your results.

Next week-15 miles.