Hi all,<br><br>
Tonight's plan was 13 miles on the Merrimack River Trail. I only managed 10 miles. Normally, I'd be angry with that, but tonight folks I feel <b>very</b> fortunate to be sitting here to give you this report.<br><br>
When I started the run tonight, we had just finished a real gully-washer of a thunderstorm. The rain had stopped, and so I started my run. About 3 miles in the rain returned, but there was no thunder, so that wasn't a problem. The trail was very muddy, but I could deail with that.<br><br>
The plan for me today was to do the 5 mile out, then go back to the mile 3/7 marker then repeat miles 3-7 before finishing off the run. When I got out to mile 5 I noticed that the temperature had started to drop a bit and the wind was coming up. I got to the mile 6 mark, and at this point I'm 4 miles from my car. Suddenly I see a flash. Yup, lightning, and a lot closer than I like. So then I said, okay, let's just get back to the car, and if it has passed by the time I get back to the car, I'll repeat the out and back for the first 1.5 miles.<br><br>
However, on the way back there is a drainage ditch I have to cross. Normally, there is no water in the drainage ditch, even under the snow melt there was never any water in it. However, we had such a gully washer today, that when I got back there was a very fast stream of water going across the drainage ditch. Worse yet, there was no way around it. On my left was the Merrimack River. On my right, a large swamp that had turned into a pond with the rain. The water in the stream had a pretty good current. Since I didn't know any other way out of there, I decided to try to ford the stream. The water was up over my 1/4 of the way up my shins, but the current was fast enough that it was trying to knock me over. I got across, but was scary.<br><br>
So I managed to dodge the lightning bolts and the high water today.<br><br>
You know what, the time sucked tonight, but somehow, I'm okay with that.<br>
Here's the data:<br><br><br><b>Daily Run Report</b><br><br><b>Date:</b> 05/16/2007 <b>Time:</b> 16:06<br><b>Run Type:</b> Just A Run<br><b>Distance:</b> 10.0 miles<br><b>Total time:</b> 01:46:41.5 <b>Average Per Mile:</b> 00:10:22.1<br><b>Course:</b> OTHER COURSE<br><b>Max HR (for entire workout):</b> 172<br><b>Average HR:</b> 147<br><b>Shoes:</b> Mizuno Wave Ascend 2 - 05/2007 <b>Date Entered Service:</b> 05/08/2007 <b>Ending Mileage:</b> 49.4<br><b>Weather:</b> Rain, heavy at times with thunder and lightning.<br><b>Temperature:</b> 48 <b>Temperature Type:</b> Ambient Air <b>Time:</b> Start<br><b>Temperature:</b> 45 <b>Temperature Type:</b> Ambient Air <b>Time:</b> End<br><b>Dew Point:</b> 47 <b>Time:</b> Start<br><b>Dew Point:</b> 44 <b>Time:</b> End<br><b>Wind speed:</b> 4 <b>Max Gust:</b> 14 <b>Direction:</b> N<br><br>
MERRIMACK RIVER TRAIL.<br><br><br><br>
The plan tonight was 13 miles on the trail. Did not happen. Unlike last week when I had a nasty bonk and dehydration, tonight it was the weather.<br><br>
Trail was in rough shape with the rain.<br><b>Run Segments<br>
Name Time Distance AvgMile HR AvgHR Total Time</b><br>
5 mile out 00:49:17.4 5.0 00:09:51.5 145 149 00:49:17.4<br>
5 mile back 00:54:23.5 5.0 00:10:52.7 149 147 01:43:40.9<br>
Recovery 00:03:00.6 0.0 00:00:00.0 77 110 01:46:41.5