Rain...and running

Over my almost 49 years of living, I have learned to never complain about rain.

I have seen way too many dry summers and can usually not worry about a good rain, even if it is not the best time for it.

But this late winter, early spring monsoon of this week has been almost too much.

I planned to spend considerable hours watching baseball at the Poteau Wood Bat Festival, but noooo.

I have watched it rain. And rain. And then more rain. I have tried the old rain chant “Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day…like July”, but gotten no response.

How are we going to bring thousands of college and high school students to make LeFlore County their spring break destination if all we can promise is rain?

The rain has also slowed down my annual spring running until my knees swell up like watermelons routine. I did get in a run Sunday and Monday, but that good start has been slowed because of the rain.

During my Sunday run, I did see something interesting. I was running (okay, maybe jogging very slowly) at the track when I actually passed a walker and noticed he was eating an ice cream cone while walking the track.

That didn’t quite add up to me. Yeah, it was an impressive use of multi-tasking and a part of me could understand his reasoning: Yes, I ate a double dip of ice cream and a waffle cone, but walked while I was doing it.

I am trying to get up to enough miles to do the Vike Hike in April and maybe do the Cavanal Killer in May, however, I am not particularly fond of trying out any event which has “Killer” in its title.

It has been over 10 years since I ran in a 5K. My only previous run was at Ben Geren Park in Fort Smith. That run was in May, starting at 1 p.m. Fortunately, I was in pretty good shape. But it was sunny and hitting close to 90 degrees, so it was not exactly prime running conditions.

When I got to the park, the sun kind of bothered me since I am lacking in the hair department. I checked and found no hat. I did have a visor and decided that would help keep my face cool. Bob Stoops does look better with a visor than the Craigman, I must admit.

Other than getting passed at the finish line by a guy approximately three times my age with more hair growing out of his ears than I did my head, I enjoyed the run since I actually finished without passing out or releasing projectile puke. The whole visor idea was not a great success, however.

I guess it did provide some relief to my face, but after getting home, I discovered that I had a unique sun burn over part of my head, but not other parts. Having a sunburned noggin is not an enjoyable experience.

All it did was provide some comic relief.