Splish, Splash, I Was Taking A Bath...

Or, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" --

This morning's run was one for the scrapbooks, that's for sure! Scheduled for today was a tour of the revised 3M Half Marathon course, with a couple extra miles at the end to get us to RunTex and stretching, etc. The forecast last night was for 60 degrees and scattered thunderstorms, which sounded tolerable to me. I figured a long-sleeved shirt, a cap, maybe a running vest, and I'd be fine. So, this morning when I awoke, I heard the pitter patter of rain outside, and felt pretty smug that I'd sussed out the weather conditions. Got my banana and pre-race Gatorade, and I got in the white bus to drive down to RunTex for the carpool caravan.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the old car thermometer read "51" as I started the drive downtown. Hmmmmm. Still, I was definitely dressed for the conditions, and felt pretty good about things. It was "just" 15 miles or so, so how bad could it be? By the time I reached RunTex, the temperature had dropped ominously to 49 degrees, and the rain was a'falling. Still, I thought that would be okay. I dropped my warm post-run clothing in Amy's car, and waited under the shed with my fellow Gazelles for Gilbert's arrival.

When he got there, he was very excited. He was shouting, "You guys are awesome! There's nobody else out here! You are tough!" It worked a little bit, I guess, but we were already feeling a little silly about the whole thing. With rumbles of thunder occasionally rolling across the sky, and the rain being pretty insistent, it was definitely a day for just the most dedicated/crazy of runners, that's for sure.

I piled my truck full of runners (and T-Dog, who rode behind the third row of seats), and with the defrosters blowing hard, we eased our way up to Gateway for the start of the point-to-point course. Rachel had reserved a seat in the Tahoe, but at departure time, she had not arrived, so her seat was given to the first Standby Passenger, Eric. Turns out that Rachel woke up, got dressed, and turned around when she realized she couldn't see her car from the door of her house. Can't say that I blame her much. :-) Water was pooling up all over Mopac, but we were still thinking that the rain might blow itself out soon...which proved to be a thought without merit.

We all piled out at Gateway, and after a small amount of crowd inertia working against us, we finally just started running. Within the first mile, the groups had separated out, and we were pretty much set for the rest of the day. I was fairly comfortable by the end of that first mile, except for my hands, which would remain pretty chilly. We had a pretty huge group running along around our pace, including but not limited to Emily, Monique, Colleen, Jennifer, Lisa, Sue, Renee (toughing it out in the short sleeved shirt!), Laura, Javier, and Megan. It was hard to tell who was actually there, what with all the hoods, hats, and jackets covering everyone up. After negotiating the semi-scary access road along 183, we crossed Loop 360, and finally made our way up towards Mesa Drive. Gilbert, Pete, and the rest of the faster Gazelles caught us along this stretch, and we settled in for the rest of our long day in the rain. Sooner than expected, we reached Rudy and the first water stop at Anderson High School. We made the first of our rather quick water/Powerade/GU stops there (hard to hang out and chat under those conditions), and moved on. So far, so wet.

Splits miles 1-3.3: 10:04, 9:30, 9:08, 0.3 miles at 9:10. Overall, 9:32/mile pace.

From there, the rain came down harder, and we had to negotiate increasingly large and deep puddles and streams along the sides of the roads (and on the sidewalks, too!). We enjoyed the largely downhill stretch on Mesa to Spicewood Springs, and then crossed back over the road to go over the Mopac bridge and then turn onto Shoal Creek. Colleen mentioned that she was listening to "Get The Knack!" in her car lately, and so I was stuck with Knack songs for the next hour. Thanks, Colleen! It was noticeably more comfortable when we were heading south, with the chilling breeze to our backs. A few turns later, we were headed to Great Northern, and I took that opportunity to check out some fencing to make sure it was stable. Having confirmed that, I caught back up with the gang on McElroy, as we cruised the flat couple of miles in there and behind NorthCross Mall. Rudy was there with the second water stop on Foster, and we made yet another quick stop with the gang. Still feeling pretty good, albeit with fully soaked clothes and shoes, we moved on. Yee haw, and all that.

Splits miles 4-6: 8:53, 9:12 (fence stop), and 0.68 miles at 8:27/mile (catching up). Overall down to 9:15/mile. Under the conditions, that was a solid training day.

We ran through more deep rivers and puddles along Foster/NorthCross Drive, and abandoned any hope of avoiding totally soggy feet. From there on, we just stomped our way through whatever was there, and it was liberating, in sort of a 5-year old playing in the rain sort of way. We crossed onto Burnet, and ran along the flooded sidewalks and grassy storefront lots as we went south towards North Loop. I was also in charge (self-appointed, of course) of judging the relative danger of lightning. I used the old slow counting trick from the flash of the lightning, using 1000 ft per second for the sonic boom to catch up with the light. Like I told the gang, we were okay as long as it didn't go "FLASHBOOM!" The closest it got was maybe a mile, so we felt all right about that.

It was somewhere in here that I really got the giggles...we could scarcely imagine the reactions of the few drivers out on the water-logged streets as they saw this pack of runners working their way along the roads in the rain, lightning and thunder. Along Burnet, there were several times when I could tell that everyone had fallen into themselves, in a sort of individual bubble of concentration, to try and push themselves through this run. It was fun and all, but we rarely have to run in the rain here in Austin, so this was taking some mental horsepower to push through today.

Up North Loop, we reentered last year's Freescale course, and motored up the hills to the next water stop. I took my second GU there, but all things considered, I probably didn't need it. A short time later, we were off again. We were way past halfway done, so at least we could say that!

Splits miles 7-8.8: 9:01, 9:02, 0.8 miles at 8:47/mile. Overall running pace 9:09/mile.

More deep water puddles later, we trudged up the rest of the hilly section of the course, on North Loop / 53rd Street, and turned south onto Duval for the start of the nice downhill finishing stretch of the 3M course. Again, the wind was at our backs, so things improved a bunch just because of that. The rain would come down hard for a while, then let up a bit, then crash down again. Variety is the spice of life, I have heard, but this was sort of a one-track spice, if you ask me. We tried to pretend that we were in Seattle, but that only helped a little. The last water/Powerade stop was along Duval, and we almost ran by it. Renee spied it before we could rumble past. One last bit of Powerade (another GU seemed unimportant by now), and we were into the homestretch. We knew we were going to get through this thing, but you could tell that everyone was starting to accelerate a bit to get to their dry clothing. Simple things make us so happy! Frank and Brian caught and passed us at that last water stop, having made a stop somewhere along the way, I guess.

Splits miles 9-11: 0.31 miles at 8:55/mile, 21 second stoplight, 8:57, and 0.87 miles at 8:49/mile. Running overall pace 9:06/mile. Time to head to the barn!

We totally got our feet drenched on San Jacinto and through the UT campus, but it was just a matter of how much new cold water was in our shoes by this point. The shoes were so water-logged that they weren't functioning very well as cushioning devices, but as heavy as they were, I guess they were still doing their job. We dodged a bus or two, a couple of cars, and exited campus on Trinity Street, heading to the half marathon finish line. Unlike in years past, there is no deep dive to the finish this year, but it is a pretty flat to gentle downhill trend for the last couple of miles, so that's fair. We passed the finish line at Waterloo Park, and motored up the hill on Trinity to 11th Street, where we turned to go over to Congress and the big finish.

We were all feeling ready to be finished, and we bombed down Congress on the sidewalks, carefully watching our steps as we went up and down curbs and through puddles. I did notice a bit of irony as we saw a considerable number of homeless folks curled up under whatever shelter they could find in the entrances to various businesses downtown...and we were voluntarily out there almost playing in the same rain and cold that makes life so tough this time of year for those less fortunate people. Sobering if you take a moment to ponder life's vagaries...

At any rate, I called another route audible, and we crossed Town Lake on the Congress bridge. We saw our second non-Gazelle runner out there, crossing north on the bridge as we flew south. We exchanged greetings, and just for a moment, you could tell that despite the wet and the cold, there was a sense of determination and pride that flashed between us. It was that feeling that, like Gilbert said, "No one else is crazy enough to be out here, but here we are!" I noticed what appeared to be a lot of debris in Town Lake, but it turned out to be hundreds of ducks or other water birds (hard to tell from that height). I guess it really was weather fit for a duck, huh? They were having a grand time floating in the water with the rain falling all around them.

We crossed Congress on the bridge, and cut over to the Hyatt, and finally crossed to RunTex via the parking lot for the Chamber of Commerce building. Laura was running step for step with me on my shortened "fast finish," and as we reached the shed where Rudy was parked and the other Gazelles were huddled out of the rain, I broke out in a big smile and laugh as we finished this silly, crazy running day. High fives all around, we had definitely earned our running badges today!

Splits miles 12-14.6: 8:47, 8:40, 8:39, 0.65 miles at 7:28/mile. Overall running pace 8:57. With water stops included, it was 14.64 miles at 9:26/mile. Not too bad.

My HR numbers were terrific today, only bumping up over sedate long-run bpm during the short fast finish, and even then, it just burbled over into that range for a few minutes. Except for the weather conditions, it was a blast. And, truth be known, I think the weather made this run that much more fun. It certainly has made it a memorable one!

Amy rolled up a few minutes later, in her car, and I grabbed my bag and went into RunTex to borrow their bathroom so I could get out of the soaking wet clothes and shoes. That was almost miraculously wonderful, getting into warm clothing. My skin felt funny, until I realized that it was just the blood starting to flow back into the periphery of my body, bringing me back to normal operating temperatures. Amy had the car heater blasting when I climbed back in for the ride up to Gateway to retrieve our cars. Liliana, Amy and I laughed a lot about this run as we drove carefully up Mopac, including the perpetually flooded underpass under Steck. A Transportation worker was out in the far right hand lane, digging through the water trying to unclog the drains that would normally make that underpass, uh, passable. The water was knee-deep to that guy.

Once we got back to the cars, I had to wait in my car for a couple of minutes until the heated seats started warming me up to get the shivers to stop. An uneventful ride back home from there, and my running day was done. No stretching, due to weather, but it was actually a pretty great training run. Only a runner could understand, but it was fun out there today. Something about sloshing through the driving rain, ankle-deep streams of water, and occasionally howling winds makes you feel a more heightened sense of awareness of the world around you. And, you'd only get to experience that as a runner, I think. Okay, maybe a hiker, cyclist, soldier, etc., might get it, too, but you understand where I'm coming from, right? :-)

A great day at the running office! Now, will we get what the weather folks call "Wintry Mix" tomorrow and/or Monday? Can't wait to see!