Thursday, July 23, 2015

Run in the Sun

Besides serving as a tour guide for the personable and charming Anna VanWinkle, Tuesday was special for another reason. I took a run with my daughter, which is always memorable. The run itself wasn't fun much, but that we did it together was. 

It was hot. 

It was very hot. 

It was dangerously hot. 

I rarely complain about high temperatures, but I made an exception this time because the afternoon was so blazing that I even got a little worried I might die out there. Seriously. 

It was a spur of the moment sort of thing. "Let's take a run," I chipped in, and she was all for it. We did a quick change and were headed west on Laughlin Road in no time flat. Not too far down the gravel path, less than half a mile, we found a little entrance into a soybean field and we took it enjoying the soft dirt turnrow under our feet. But the farmer was irrigating and the 107 heat index the Weather Channel App on my phone proclaimed was most likely far short of the actual conditions we faced. It got so bad that Andrea walked several times, crying at her inability to run, while I barely kept a shuffle and doubled back from time to time. 

We made a big rectangle around the bean field, and when we came upon a little patch of trees in the ditch that bordered the field, we stopped to avail ourselves of the only shade in sight. Lucky, Andrea's moose-sized rescue dog, was with us and he caught a mockingbird but was too lethargic to keep it, and the bird luckily lept back into the bush. The birds, which filled the trees and bush in that little oasis of cover, like us, didn't want to move. They too were suffering in the oppressive heat.

Before it was over, I shuffle 2.5 miles at lawn mower speed, and we both had to walk in. I loved on Smu, Buttons, and Caitlin, and then was off the DSU and masters swim for the first time in what seemed like forever. I saw Ricky Smith, Mark Blackwood, Manuella, and a couple of other people I did not know. I only did 2,400 was done, worn out from a long day of stimulation and exercise.

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