I foolishly signed up for the Hoosier 200 Relay. It is packed with hills and heat. The most similar training run I found in the Ville starts on Southern Parkway and climbs to the top of Iroquois Park. It is 280 elevation gain over 2 miles. It isn't near comparable to the legs in the relay, but it is the closest we have.
Last night, a storm was approaching from the West. Bob thought we could beat it. Bob was right, for his distance. I wanted to run more though. Foolishly, I made the decision to continue on with the lower loop despite the imminent signs of catastrophe advertising themselves across the western skyline.
Below is how I summarized this adventure to the relay team members who did not participate.
From: ****
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 10:23 AM
To: [hoosier 200 team]
Subject: Report: H200 Prep
Sixteen percent of the H200 Twelve met last night for some prep work.
I don't know what principle of How We Work Together Bob practiced but it may have saved my life.
We'd already run from the gazebo to the top of the park and completed the upper loop at Iroquois, see? I was adding distance on the lower loop as Bob headed back to his vehicle. As I wound my way to the backside of the loop (AKA the furthest distance from my car) my spider senses started relaying messages of peril (dark skies, loud thunder, bright lightning, etc).
I don't know where the squirrels and other woodland creatures go when severe weather threatens but they were, apparently, already there. I picked up the pace to about a 5K effort. The adrenal gland is a real performance enhancer. I was beginning to calculate how fast I could run curled up in a fetal position when Bob's car suddenly appeared on the horizon. He was being chased by some kind of storm that had not yet caught him. I hopped in. I wasn't in his car two minutes before a wall of water erased visibility and random tree parts either flung themselves at Bob's vehicle or impeded his path by dropping onto the road.
Good times.
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