Mad Dog's Blaze of Glory

First, like everyone else around here, let me preface this by saying the weather here has been bad. Two and a half inches of rain in one hour, then another 5 in 4 hours; the (pedestrian) bridges around me have the footings washed away, the photos on the news of flooding are two miles from my home - and I live on a lake - and I have water in my basement. When I went for today's run at 7 AM, it was 80 degrees, with a dewpoint of 77. There was fog!

Back in high school, my coach called me "Mad Dog" because I liked to run in the midafternoon in the summer; "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun" goes the old saying. I didn't wait for it to get to 98 degrees today, because I had a tough workout to do. They say people with respiratory problems shouldn't be outside this whole week, but then most people with respiratory problems aren't competitive runners.

I saw something I may never see again. Once the sun had risen over the hill, the dew on the grass collected, but there was nowhere to go (7-8 inches of rain, remember, the ground was saturated), so water was running downhill even though it wasn't raining. Weird. Ominous, even.

The plan had been to run a hard mile (after a warm-up), then a couple of all-out 400's up the Indian Mounds Park hill. The weather had me scale way back and I decided to just do repeats of the hill until I had had "enough." I didn't push the uphills, but I did run the downhills harder than I really needed to and, on the 7th hill, my heart rate hit 184, my maximum. I hadn't managed that since almost exactly a year ago. That was "enough."

I needed that. When I'm in shape, I'll be able to add another three hills, done with heart rate near or at maximum, but it's good to see I can do a worthwhile workout even on such a day.

The "cool-down" was difficult. I drank a half-gallon of water in about 5 minutes, then jogged through the neighborhood, trying to stay in the shade as much as possible. Only another 5 or 6 days of this heat... I hope.