Not Right in the Head

Mountain weather is notoriously changeable.  The saying is, "If you don't like the weather, just wait around a few minutes."  Here it is the same, and what we especially notice perched on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean is the wind, which always seems to be blowing either offshore or onshore through the parking area; when the sliding glass door to the balcony is even slightly open (which is how we like to keep it in order to hear the sound of surf breaking) it makes it difficult to open the door to the hallway.  Another front came in overnight - we could hear it rattling the railings in the wee hours - and this morning we awoke to a strong wind blowing straight in from the ocean with gusts up to 22 mph.  It was warm - 60 degrees - but the ocean was churning, big waves breaking; it sounded like some continuous machinery echoing in an immense factory.  Doing Tai Chi on the dune-top deck was a challenge in this wind!

I went back out to the dune-top deck to drink my coffee after breakfast as I usually do, and it was literally difficult to keep the cup steady in my hand.  Martha sent me a text message:

Martha wisely opted to use the treadmill here at the condos, but I started putting on running clothes because this was the day I had planned to run intervals again and I was not going to be deterred by a little wind.  As I struggled to open the wind-jammed door to the hallway she shook her head and said again, "You're not right in the head."

I derive a great deal of perverse pleasure running in conditions like this, or worse.  I have completed marathons, 20 of them, some of them in face-stinging rain.  I remind Martha that she has completed three marathons herself and has the same mental deficiency.  As Delbert McClinton sings:

Ain't no doubt about it.
She's the same kind of crazy as me.

Of course I'm not right in the head!  Once out in the parking lot I found it really was not very windy at all.  In fact, I was running easily, and seemed to be going faster than I had planned on my warm-up to the picnic area where I planned to run intervals. Then it dawned on me:  the wind was blowing in my direction.  I stopped and turned and it was blowing straight into my face.  The run back will be fun!

The intervals, too, were faster than expected - 0:59 and then 0:58 . . . with the wind at my back; a little slower turning and running straight into the wind.  I remember seeing something called a Runners Parachute in the back pages of Runners World magazine several years ago, and I found that Nike still sells this dubious training device.

Yes, that's exactly how it felt to run into the wind today.  And I kept repeating to myself that little mantra - it had just the right cadence after all!

NOT

RIGHT

IN

THE HEAD

Four intervals and I had had enough, and just then it began to rain a little.  "Can it get any better than this?" I thought.  It began to rain harder, horizontal ran.  But, really, it was not very heavy, it was actually cooling me off a little (I had overdressed).  That's what we runners tell ourselves.

While I was stretching under the welcome shelter of the parking area, an older man came down the elevator and smiled at me.  "I wish I could still do that!"  He said.

"It's really not too bad out there," I said; "Just a little rain.  It felt pretty good."

"I've got bone fragments floating around in my knee.  But I used to love it."

'Ah," I said.  "Well, we all do what we can.  Have a good day!"