The forecast for this morning did not look much better. Partly cloudy, then mostly cloudy, then thunderstorms, then "Strong Storms." The radar map was filled with bright orange and red blotches, crawling inexorably closer, and then continuing all day. The WLOS and WHLC weather reports warned of thunder, lightning, and possible tornadoes.
The perfect morning for another run, a day after climbing Big Bearpen! Actually, my hourly forecast indicated that there was a window between 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. - that "cloudy" then "mostly cloudy" part of the forecast - so I might be able to run two or three miles before the worst of it.
When I started out, it was merely sprinkling sporadically, barely enough to get wet. A couple were walking their dog on Fifth Street and I called out encouragingly, "It's not going to rain!" They laughed and replied, "Not until 11:00!" which confirmed the forecast I had heard. I realized I was running faster than I had planned, especially the day after a steep workout, but I decided to keep up the pace, listen carefully to my body for any signs that I was pushing too hard, and turn this Window Run into a Fast Run. Going into my second mile on Wilson Road, a flat-bed truck was parked in the road, adjoining neat stacks of concrete blocks that had been unloaded for a new home under construction. A young man was standing in the road watching me approach, and he called out, "Is there a bear chasing you? and laughed. I must have looked like I was running fast! "No, just my past," I said, "And all my old sins." That evoked more laughter.
I had been hearing thunder from time to time, and coming around Harris Lake into my third mile there was a pretty loud boom. But at the same time, there was bright light along the horizon to the north, and the rain had increased only slightly. There was a flash of lightning nearby, too, and that energizing scent of thunderstorm-ozone was in the air. I came down the last hill, finishing with a 32:03 for 5-K, and I realized that I had been enjoying sustained fast running again, that exhilarating feeling of flight we experience during races, of pushing the gearshift into a higher gear and taking off! The rain picked up even more on my cool-down lap, and the thunder was unnervingly close; by the time I returned to cover it was a downpour. The window had been abruptly slammed shut.
There are not many more rewarding experiences in a runner's life than running fast and watching it rain hard after you have gotten back to cover!
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