Running with Gustav

The remnants of Hurrican Gustav have been soaking central Arkansas since Monday night. The Tuesday Flyer's Clinic was cancelled due to the wind and rain, I personally was very relieved I was feeling tired and sore from the three day Labor Day weekend. Instead of being a good girl and running on the treadmill, I decided to meet Kelly at Starbuck's. We had a nice girls chat over grande Vivano chocolate banana protein shakes. For much of the spring and early summer Kelly and I would meet at Starbucks every Sunday evening, but with vacations and changing schedules we haven't been able to go so it was really nice to get to spend a couple hours together just hanging out and chatting.

Wednesday morning Jane texted me at 5:00am to say she thought it would be best if we cancelled our run... she and I were the only one's left who were even considering it so after I got her text I just went back to bed. I forgot to reset my alarm and the next thing you know it is 7:45 and Arland is waking me up.

The rain and wind just kept coming all day Wednesday, we lost power at work for about an hour and a half. I had resigned myself to just running on the treadmill at home, but then I got an e-mail from Brenda. Cindy was challenging/inviting us to go for a run in the rain after Bun's & Ab's class. I seriously did not want to run outside, there was debris all over the roads lot's of roads were flooded etc. I told Brenda I would go to class and then we would play it by ear as far as an outside run. I had called Michele and she was up for whatever, except treadmill running.
Lot's of familiar faces at B&A class... Cindy, Heather, Michele, Isabella (new runner) and myself. It wasn't one of the better classes but there were a few things we did that I know I am going to feel later today!!!
Brenda didn't do the class, she can't really get to Cabot by 5:30 but her plan was to run on the treadmill until class was over.
I had to change into my running skirt and when I came out of the bathroom Cindy was on a treadmill... I said so you guys changed your mind or something like that and Brenda and Cindy both said it was too windy outside. I took that to mean they didn't want to run outside so I went downstairs to meet Michele to see what she wanted to do. I should have know that my nature girl was of course going to want to run in the rain... so off we went.

Once we got our Garmins synched up we were off, since it was raining we just started running and running fast from the very beginning. When we came to our first water puddle I kind of hopped over it.. Michele looked over at me, shook her head and said "oh by the way, it's wet out here" LOL point taken. After that we looked for as many puddles as we could find and believe me there were ton's!! Some were really deep and as we were running by the tennis courts it was kind of like running through a River. Also as we were running by the tennis courts we saw a huge branch come crashing down... it was really kind of cool and scary at the same time. After that I told Michele we needed to stay away from trees!!!
The run was going ok.. I started feeling a weird tightness in my left shin and foot so finally I told Michele I was going to have to stop for a second and adjust my shoe. I guess I had it tied too tight and it was having a weird affect on my leg because after I adjusted and retied everything was much better.
We were running at a very good pace, it was hard but we were only planning a short run so I just tried to keep up with Michele.
We did have to stop at HWY 89 for traffic and it was a good minute or more before we could cross the street.
After we crossed over 89 we were in old neighborhood with lot's of trees!! sheesh I thought we were going to avoid trees??? LOL There were several Entergy work crews out working on downed power lines... I know they thought we were crazy but they were nice and we got some smiles from a couple of those guys. The people driving by didn't see as friendly and we got sprayed on several occasions.
We were finally crossing back over 89 and on our way back to the Community Center... I had three miles and mentally was done, but by the time we got to the junction where we could have taken a short cut we had 3.3 miles and Michele said don't you want 4??? Of course I did! Right at 3.83 my stomach acted up and I had to stop and cross my legs.. I was so MAD!! but luckily once I let it calm down it was ok and i was able to catch up with Michele and finish with no emergencies.
Our average pace for 4 miles was 10:18. I would love to know what it would have been if we hadn't had to stop and wait on traffic and my stomach incident. Oh well it was a great run!!! The whole time we were running we kept saying how great it was... I could have done without the heavy winds!!! There were a couple of times when I actually felt like we were running backwards it was so hard! but running in the rain was actually fun!

I called Brenda on my way home and she had a miserable run on the Treadmill and she didn't realize we went outside to run, she thought we had changed our minds too and gone to Latin Dance class. I think if she would have known we were going outside whe would have gone with us.....

I have some miles to make up so hopefully we will get a longish run in this evening... it looks like Gustav has moved on so hopefully we will dry out soon.