This morning I checked another item off of my running bucket list (not really)…..Running in a Tropical Storm. With tropical storm Debby bearing down on the gulf coast, I took off along Front Beach Road for my scheduled 70 minute run at easy pace. Nathan….would this also be considered crazy?
I’ll have to say this was one of the strangest runs I’ve ever experienced as far as it relates to conditions. For most of the 70 minutes I faced constant strong winds with gusts of 40+ MPH. Sometimes it felt like I was being shoved forward, sometimes it felt like I was running in place, and other times my feet were landing way left or right of where I took off. When the run was finished I was covered by a nice layer of sand from all of the wind. The weather would also go from cloudy with no rain, to periods of pelting rain, to periods of full sun.
As for the run itself, I felt pretty good throughout, though I did get fatigued from constantly fighting the wind. I tried to maintain a consistent effort even though the conditions made my mile splits bounce all over the place. In total I finished just over 8.5-miles in the 70 minutes at a pace just under 8:15 per mile.
Now that it is later in the day, Debby has taken an unexpected turn to the east, which left us with clear skies and a beautiful sunset on the beach. Olivia and I along with Kate and Sara took the opportunity to enjoy a very nice walk together. While this is good news for us, it will be a tough couple of days for those in Central Florida.
Beast Mode…ON!