A Windy One

We've had another one of those big rainstorms the last couple of days. This one was actually as big as the weather faces on TV predicted. It rained pretty solid for nearly 24 hours. This isn't much for most people but I'm here in southern California. Remember it never rains here. For most of us its just an annoyance, especially during the commute to and from work. It did cause some flooding and even some landslides.

Because of the weather I decided to get Tuesday's 6 miler in on Monday night to beat the rain. I went out at 8:30 p.m. It was a very calm night. It just seemed quieter than normal. The calm before the storm I guess. I'm glad I did that run because of the previously mentioned rain.

This week I am back up to an 8 miler midweek, so I packed my stuff for a run after work hoping that the weather would cooperate. I brought long sleeves and a hat just in case. At 3:30 it was still raining pretty hard, but by 4:00 the sky was clearing up. The wind was blowing out of the west, pushing the storm towards the mountains.

I went over to my usual after work run at the Santa Fe Dam. It was sure windy up there on the exposed part of the dam, about 2 miles. Looking west towards the ocean the sky was pretty clear and the sun was shining. Off to the north and west the clouds were all piled up black and gray at the mountains. It was kind of a cool juxtaposition to be able to see two different skies with a turn of my neck.

The first mile of the trail heads south. I was buffeted by a cross wind that pushed me around a little bit. After that, the trail heads east so the wind was predominately at my back. After about 2.5 miles the trail descends into the park behind the dam, so I was somewhat protected from the wind. Since Celeste wasn't running with me today (she is taking salsa lessons), I ran out for 4 miles before turning around. When I came back up out of the park I was running head first into the wind for a good mile. I caught up to a couple of kids on bikes. I said something to them about how hard it was to ride into the wind. They asked me a lot of questions - "how far does the trail go?" 32 miles from where we were all the way to the beach, "do you run every day?" almost. "do you every walk?" sometimes. "are you on the track team? No, I'm out of school. I slowed down a bit to talk to them. They were really struggling in the wind. I finally pulled on ahead of them. After the trail headed back north again, the headwind wasn't so strong so they caught up to me. They told me "you run pretty fast." Thanks, I appreciate that. "You never give up, huh?" I try not to. Even though they were young, I figured I'll take a complement anywhere I can get it.

Factoring the wind into the equation I think I got a pretty good workout with this run. The best part of the run - I started about 5:30 p.m. and finished the 8 miles and the sun was still way up in the sky. Yahooo for Daylight Savings Time.