Ventura Pier after the storm. Photo by Matt Switzler
Today’s long run was 11 miles…and I was looking forward to it! But yesterday’s storm wasn’t quite done with us, so we woke to a nice steady rain ( thankfully not the downpour and wind of yesterday). As we left the house (Matt and Megan ran with me) the rain continued, and our normal route was detoured due to flooding. Joy! We parked in downtown Ventura and did our warmup in the parking garage to delay the inevitable soaking.
Photo by Matt Switzler
We’re not used to seeing water in this river. Photo by Matt Switzler
Then we were off! We had a light rain for about a mile then nothing. The normally dry river was flowing strongly and we discovered the RV park next to it was evacuated and flooded.
We continued on and shortly encountered mud…it was at the 2-mile mark. We slowly waded through…. ran… encountered more mud… ran…mud…ran…and then experienced the worse mud as the Emma Wood trail encountered the highway. The highway was also buried in mud. Because he was only running 6 miles, Matt had already turned back. Megan and I had just under 8 miles more to run.
This wasn’t the worse of the mud! Photo by Matt Switzler
Those next miles were wonderful…beautiful weather, beautiful scenery, beautiful running! Megan and I decided to run the next 8 here so as not to return through the mud. Thankfully Scott agreed to pick us up on the Rincon (and he arrived just as we hit 11 miles).
All this is a reminder that even when something doesn’t look promising, just go. You just might be pleasantly surprised! And if the workout (or task) isn’t pleasant, you still accomplished it!
Today I’m personally thankful for: my kids who are also training partners (I even kept up with Megan today!); the photos that Matt took of today’s sites; and for successfully completing week 2 of Mountains2Beach training (30.9 miles).
