Friday, June 13, 2008

Heavy Rain + long run

The rain is falling for days and days. There are periods of clear skies, but sooner or later black clouds bring torrential downpours that last for hours.

This morning I set the alarm clock at 5.00am and planned a long run. Actually I did sleep too little and very poorly, so I was really not motivated by the ring of the alarm clock.
Dragging out of bed, I eventually set out from home at 5.30am and decided to hit the streets of the town centre rather than always looping around the same industrial estate.
Well, very pleasant surprise: at that time, the roads were completely quiet and actually this town were I live now is quite pleasant for running. There are large boulevards lined with factories inside the town center itself and there are no sign of heavy traffic, trucks like it was in my previous place.
That town (the old one) was at a cross-road of important national roads and the local administration did not care about building some outer ring or drive through road. So all the traffic (trucks 24/7...) was obliged to pass in the town center and it has alwasy been a nightmare for me to find some quiet route. So for 3 years I had to stick to the same loop.

Overall I did 22km, without "looping" ... not bad. I even found a nice country road heading to a dam that deserves further exploration.

What did I forget ? it was raining, heavy rain (orange alert was issued). Road were flooded and it was like running under a shower of warm water. In some point I had to run with the water up to the ankles...
At least the rain was a good coolant...
total 22km in 1h37' (not bad being my first long run in 3 months).

1 comment:

Eric said...

I was looking forward to hearing about the 'secret weapon'...=)

I am getting lots of rainy days here in North Dakota as well. Not downpours like in China, but a steady soaking rain about every day or every other day. Too much rain.