Weather

[ha...@3-cities.com]

How's the running weather for any of you in the Midwestern US? Is the
rain as widespread as the forecasters make it seem?

Leslie
from the sunny far West

[Bruce S.]

Pretty brutal. People who live near the rivers & creeks are having
flooding. But Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa & Minnesota have it even worse.

Last night was the most violent. Quite a few trees got broken off.
The picture at the link is typical.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070824weathermain-story,1,4660280.story

#1 son was a little slow getting off the soccer pitch yesterday
afternoon and later described a black wall of water that almost
knocked him over. #2 son had to huddle in the basement of his junior
HS with everyone else in the school for almost two hours. The third
page of the news item at the link describes what it was like when the
winds hit. I was on the 21st floor looking out a window in downtown
Chicago (real smart) - the water came horizontally and broke on the
shorter building next to ours like an ocean wave on rocks.

For running, well, everybody's pretty much acclimated to very warm
conditions by now, but even when the temps are only high 70's or low
80's, when the humidity is over 90%, it's very difficult. You sweat
and sweat and sweat, but nothing ever evaporates from your skin - it
just sort of flows off of you. I only need to be out for 30 minutes
or so before my shoes are squishing. So you lose the fluids without
getting any evaporative cooling. It's a double whammy.

Saw Billy B. Balls and his lovely bride at Bix this year. My 23rd Bix
7 is in the books.

Tim S. starts Hood to Coast in less than three hours from now. I
received a last-minute invite, but the air fares weren't quite right,
to say the least.

If anyone has the Versus network, make sure you check out the World
T&F Championships from Osaka beginning this weekend.

[CtheRM]

Yes, Ohio has been pretty crummy this summer, with many mornings of
80+F (and many days of 90F) / 80% humidity, and the last week was
especially ... non-ideal. Running in thundering and lightning storms,
for example, is not ideal. Columbus, however, has been lucky relative
to northern parts of Ohio (those are the flooded scenes of Ohio in the
news).

Yesterday involved a pretty close call with a tornado in Columbus. I
still haven't gotten used to the tornado sirens.

But in spite all of this (and despite only getting three hours of
sleep the night before), I ran 18 miles yesterday morning, as part of
training for the Columbus Marathon, Oct 21. (I didn't even know that
you could run 18 miles on three hours of sleep. I'll admit I'm pretty
self-impressed.)

My husband and I will be proceeding from one state of emergency to
another: we'll be in Greece one week from now, where 104F temps and
arson (!) have contributed to a state of emergency (due to fire) in
the part of the country where we're supposed to be spending a lot of
time.

[Frank S]

Weather is weird. This has been the driest summer in Florida going
back many years. No daily afternoon rains where I live this year-
which bodes ill for our normal dry season Nov-May.

Good to see Bruce responding. I was afraid he had gone over to the
dark side! That will never happen.

Next week is the middle of the hurricane season. So far so good! But
October is the truly evil month when it comes to 'canes.

Bill B Balls has a nice picture up on his homepage of his lovely bride
and himself. I don't have the address handy but just google Jeff Day
(his alter ego) and you can probably pull it up.

I'm contemplating buying superbowl tickets to watch my Bucs win
again:-) Yeah right!

Leslie, good to read your update awhile back. I want you to know that
Laura Lynn pegged my age at 55 based on her complicated analysis. Who
am I to say she was wrong. Oh, and yell across the state line there
and tell that senator from Idaho that he is looking for love in all
the wrong places:-)

Best wishes all and good running.