Lightning and Thunder

Late this morning, after feeling lazy and unmotivated for the past few days, I guiltily drove out to the base to trail run.

The temperature was very mild in this second week in January, and the sky was an uninterrupted grey again, as it has been for the past few days.

After days of rain there would be water crossings in all low lying sections of the single and double track trails, water along the length of many trails that would be running down into pools, a huge pond complete with fast moving offshoots at the bottom of a jeep trail, another huge pond at the bottom of a fire service road heading back towards a trail entrance.

And mud.

Lots of mud.

There were no other vehicles in the parking lot, and as I walked towards the trail head and then slowly began to pick up the pace, I knew that I was going to get very wet during the run.

But also as I headed towards the trail head I heard a low rumble.

I stopped for a moment and turned back, scanning the sky.

With trees all around me all I could see was the same grey sky I had been looking at for days.

Was that thunder or something related to the base?

For a brief instant I thought about Wyoming.  If there was a storm heading my way out there I would have been able to see it while it was still many miles away.

I stood for a moment waiting to hear it again but did not so continued towards the trail head.

I heard the rumble again.  Low and sounding far away.

I stopped again, waited for the rumble a third time, did not hear it and began my run.

After just a couple of minutes the trail forks and usually I take the left fork.

Today I took the right fork and slowly, horribly slowly, ran on the leaf filled and wet trail, trying to force both my head and my body to get into the game.

My continued lack of motivation was hard to shake off but I was trying.

The picture above is about a mile into my run.

Although there are numbers posted at various trail heads throughout the maintained bike route (which I always ignore but which are used a good deal by hard core mountain bikers who use these trails) the picture above shows the only actual "trail" signs located in the area.

Today I ignored those signs as well.

I knew exactly where I was and instead of following the maintained trail I veered off and picked up a wide open and pine tree filled double track trail.

So far I had not hit any large water holes and my feet were still dry.

I was liking these new Salomon shoes.

Fifteen minutes later I heard it again.

Only this time it was much louder and much closer.

I looked at the sky. 

There is only so much you can see when you are deep in the forest but it was time to begin heading back.

And soon I heard it again and it was loud.

Oh hell...........it was definitely time to get outta Dodge.

The big story in adventure racing is always the weather, and this part of the country (with constant clashes of warm and cold air) is notorious for violent thunder and lightning storms.

They are usually a Spring story in the South and not a January story.

But the weather has been so mild here this Winter.

I ran back to my truck much faster and much more motivated than I had run out.

Five minutes later I was driving home, the first flash of lightning struck, the thunder hit in waves, the sky opened up and it was pouring with rain.................

Sometime during my first year of adventure racing, me and two other women signed up for a 12 hour race at a state park west of of Nashville.

It was in the Spring, the race started early in the morning and it started in cool but very sunny conditions.

Throughout the morning the sky began to get increasingly cloudy and by early afternoon it looked downright ominous.

We heard it first mid-afternoon and it did not take any of us by surprise - a very loud thunder boomer.

The sky had turned black.

We were not in the middle of the North Carolina or West Virginian mountains as in other races but we were too far from civilization when the hard rain started.

The thunder began and then so did the lightning.

We were on mountain bikes at the time, on a trail surrounded by woods on both sides, and there was no shelter from the storm anywhere.

We did the only prudent thing we could do, which was to ditch our bikes, ditch our packs, move away from each other and make ourselves the smallest targets we could possibly make ourselves.

Squatting in a field with thunder and lightning all around us, was the scariest race experience I had had to that point.

As we were in the middle of it I looked across the small open field in one direction and then in another direction and saw the faces of my team-mates and knew that they were also feeling the same dread that I was feeling.

Thankfully the violent storm was short lived and thankfully we came through it none the worse for wear.

Once it had passed we retrieved all of our gear, nervously laughed off the experience, and continued with our race................

A fallen tree across a wide open section of trail not far from the parking lot.

That tree fell sometime during the almost two years that I was gone from Tennessee..............

You'll be able to spit nails kid. Like the guy says, you're gonna eat lightning and you're gonna crap thunder. You're gonna become a very dangerous person............Rocky 1976