Rained Out

As you may have surmised from my last post, I didn't necessarily have a lot of confidence in my ability to race this past weekend's Pisgah 55.5k. So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that given the opportunity to not start, I would leap at it. And the excuses rained down on me quite literally Saturday night.

We had camped out directly across from the race start and after a wonderful day sailing at Lake Murray and a good night in Asheville, I was thinking the race would turn out okay. I was disabused of this thinking around midnight when the skies opened up and delivered what ended up being over three shoes full of water(every time I got up in the night, I emptied my boat shoes which every time were brimming over). We ended up soaking ourselves because I didn't close the zipper all the way and soon we had a nice little water bed.

I had intended to wake up at 8a to get ready for the race but it was still pouring and because of my less than optimal sleep, I dozed off for another hour only to awaken to no better conditions. We hurriedly disassembled the tent in the downpour and quickly changed into dry clothes in the car. After having almost cracked my skull on the sprint to the car, I was already pretty confident I would not be racing.

We did swing by the start line and I saw about 10 hardy souls milling about before the start. I knew I would not be one of them. Instead Kenny and I explored via car the area, stopped for a short run through the rain to a waterfall in Dupont State park, had lunch, drove home, showered and did laundry and still had an hour to spare before I would have likely finished the race. Some may call it cowardly but I'd prefer judicious or prudent maybe.

But now I'm short for mileage and only four weeks until my marathon in Finland so it looks like I'll be doing the typical Ferreira training plan of holding my breath and flexing my stomach.

oh well, some things never change.

Until next time,

Danny