Flooding in Southeastern VA!

Holy buckets of rain. Before I even get into discussing my J&A Racing prescribed 15-minute run this morning, let's review the events of last night. Leave the office around 3:30 PM--sunny. Drive to see grandmother at Lake Taylor--relatively heavy raining begins. Leave Lake Taylor roughly an hour later to head to downtown Norfolk--TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR. Not only did I have to take off my shoes to run through the flood plains of the parking lot where water was already above headlights of cars parked along the side of the road, I legitimately could not see anything except the heaviest raindrops in existence (I'm talking potential 2003 Isabel-status here). Luckily, I was able to sail out of the parking lot like Noah and the ark, making it to the next parking lot: I-264. 

That was a nightmare. For about an hour I sat bumper-to-bumper in afternoon traffic, while warning messages kept coming onto the radio talking about the threat of death when it comes to flash flooding. I started to question how important the planned Hump Day celebration dinner was, but then deemed it absolutely necessary, so I kept driving on towards downtown. When I finally made it to my off-ramp, a policeman stopped the exit to City Hall Ave, explaining that all of downtown was actually flooding. Preposterous! Just two hours before, I was sweating in the afternoon heat while walking to my car. That, my friends, is truly the beginning of hurricane season for you. So, I bid farewell to my evening plans and headed on home through Chesapeake (carefully avoiding the Downtown Tunnel madness) and back to my glorious 264. 

Well, from all this rain, I figured it would put a damper on my morning workout, so I prepped the next day to run on our treadmill in the house. Luckily, when I woke up this morning, there was only the dampness left from the previous night's weather nightmare, so I was able to head outside. Sweet jezebel was it hot. I thought that it would have cooled off and the humidity would have died down, but oh no. I was sorely mistaken. (One day, I will make it through a post without talking about the insane amounts of humidity in my city, but this might not be for a while, my friends.)

The run itself was nice, taking myself throughout my neighborhood and down the main road outside of it. It felt good to be on the move, as my legs have actually been pretty sore the past few days. I've been trying to stretch more often than usual (which usual means virtually never) to eliminate some of the lactic acid build-up (I do remember some things from high school anatomy class). 

I will say though, the highlight of my run was about 0.6 seconds in, when I saw my neighbor and his 3-month old Golden Retriever puppy coming out of the house to get the newspaper. Ruger, the adorable dog's name, is being trained to fetch the paper--something my own dog would scoff at wholeheartedly, as demonstrated when 20 minutes later I took her for a walk and I had to pick the paper up myself, oh well. Ruger bypassed the newspaper when he saw me go past the driveway and jumped into my arms. (I'm officially in love.) After a few moments of saying "Hi," Ruger grabbed the paper and headed back up to the house. It was a good start to the day. 

I've decided that one of the things that gets me through the runs in the morning are the other people I see, so I'm lucky I'll be running a race with boatloads of other folks on Halloween. Their costumes will provide another distraction for me, which will be extremely enjoyable to judge on my own. But for today, the count was six walkers, two dog-walkers, one biker, and FIVE runners! Nothing like being cooped up in the house for a night to make people get out and exercise the next morning. 

Tomorrow is a rest/cross-training day. I'll keep you posted on which one I decide...