Hurricane Harvey

A training plan must be flexible, and it was not difficult to realize that some flexibility was needed this week as Hurricane Harvey began to drift slowly away from devastated Texas into the Tennessee Valley.  The radar yesterday showed the monster storm on the move, breaking apart as prevailing winds finally began to nudge it eastward.

That yellow/orange color means somewhere between three and four inches, a far cry from the 50 inches that fell in Texas.  In fact, the WeatherBug color spectrum only goes as high as 25 inches; such a volume of rain defies description even on a weather map.

I moved my interval workout scheduled for Thursday ahead a day, and got started earlier than usual, driving through drizzle that changed to light fog as I climbed onto the Highlands plateau.  After a warmup, I completed two 800-meter repeats, the same as last Thursday only a little faster, and then a solid mile starting at the school.  This proved to be one of those days when unexpected obstacles appeared out of nowhere - cars backing out of driveways, construction trucks stopping in the road, a tractor trailer inexplicably blocking Pierson Drive as it turned around.  I like to find motivation in these obstacles, though; I tell myself that I can overcome them in the same way I overcome distance and speed in that long unrelenting mile, running at the top end of my ability, glancing at the marks on the pavement, making sure I am staying on pace.  It was a satisfying workout!  Each interval had been faster by a few seconds than I had expected.

And today, expecting the rain shown on that map to be a continuous downpour for two days, I was surprised to note on my radar app that there were openings between the bands of rain, as you often see in hurricanes.  So I went up to the Park, ran my errands, and sat patiently in my car as the yellow clouds on the radar slowly crept away and a clear black opening appeared; and sure enough the rain turned into a fine drizzle, and I was able to start out on a four-mile easy run.

I couldn't help thinking about the devastation in Texas as I was running, those heartbreaking images on the news, as I dodged shallow puddles here in a place where water never accumulates and rises in a heavy rain, but flows away swiftly, roars away over the dam and down the Cullasaja River, gone out of sight forever.  It is a rare event when a culvert overflow in Highlands.  As I ran, the light drizzle disappeared completely, and during the last mile a wonderful, milky, peaceful kind of light began to shine all around me and there was absolutely no wind.  Leaves were shining in the rain, dripping silently into pine straw.

By the time I drove home, that little oasis of calm had begun to disappear, the sky was darkening, and it was beginning to rain again.  But it was not a cold rain, it was a warm, balmy, tropical rain, arriving right on schedule.

I hoped the sun was finally shining in Houston.