Heat!

Seriously? 

Weather Forecast Link

Still, I’ll take that over the 100% humidity and no wind in the early morning.  I did that this past Sunday on what is probably going to become a more common road run that I call the “Capitol Loop”.  I start from my place and run to the front steps of the state capitol, then turn around and run a negative split back, uphill (technically), home for a 19.5 mile total.

The weight continues to be slowly shed, which I’m happy about considering I survived my birthday weekend with the parents in town entailing eating out more than I have in the past few months combined.  Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but not too far from the truth.  This week will be my final push before I level off and taper for one week while letting my body adjust to the new weight.

One of the best things that happened last week was during a Thursday evening trail run.  The temps were hovering around 100 degrees when I began and on my very short walk from my front door to the trailhead I noticed a particular cloud that looked promising at providing some rain.  The weather forecast was for no rain, but I couldn’t help but notice the healthy cumulus cloud to my south.  I “talked” to that cloud during the first part of my run and, eventually, noticed some virga coming from the base of the towering cloud.  It made me smile, but I still wasn’t hopeful I would see any benefit.  At a little less than 3 miles left in my run, it became breezy and somewhat “cool”, a telltale sign of a downdraft for us meteorology nerds.  Lo and behold, I began feeling raindrops and the pungent smell that fills the air when the rain hits the hot, dry ground on a Summer day.  I began talking even more to the cloud and said, “come on!!!”,  “Do it!”, “give me some RAIN!”.  Within minutes, I was running in a very localized downpour that had me smiling, yelling out loud “yes!”, and even laughing about it.  I was fortunate enough to see a double rainbow on the final downhill and, then, a third rainbow that I could almost reach out and touch.  And, it was still sunny during the entire event.  Very cool! 

Back to the heat…  I did an easy paced trail run yesterday after work while the temperatures were still 102 degrees.  I was trying to rush out when it was still 105 but didn’t make it. The interesting thing was it didn’t feel that hot and my body responded well for the first time this Summer. I’ll find out tomorrow evening if that was a fluke.