It's Not Nice to Fool (With) Mother Nature

I'm dating myself - really badly - but a few of you may be old enough to remember the old Chiffon margarine commercial "It's Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature", which came out in 1974. You can find it on YouTube if you are curious. Well, I found out about that the hard way yesterday, trying to get our 9th run in and hoping a storm would hold off on us. WRONG! The storm had just been sitting near Auburn for 30 minutes dumping water - but about the time I turned our runners loose, the storm combined with a storm between Opelika and Columbus, and headed straight toward us. A handful of runners had finished before the bottom fell out. Thankfully the lightning was not on top of us, but it was a sure-enough downpour for about 30 minutes. My timer paper got wet and quit feeding, the timer quit, we had to put up the clock, and all the finish cards got soaked - so what few cards had names on them were hard to read. Unfortunately I was not able to capture accurate results for our run - so I won't be posting any times for yesterday. What a mess! I apologize to all for not being able to capture your times. It's not nice to fool (with) Mother Nature, and she let me know it. Hopefully next week will be better. It was great having the OHS Cross Country team run with us, much thanks to Vicki Gould for arranging for them to participate. I hope to have some or all of you back for our remaining 5 runs. For all of you, keep in mind that our watermelon run will be on July 12th (free watermelon), and our pizza run will take place on August 2nd, our last run. Pizza will be free as well. By the way, Vicki captured most of the CC team times manually, so results were not a complete bust. As far as perfect attendance goes, run 9 won't be considered since it was such a disaster. I've still got things spread out in the garage drying as I post this at lunchtime Wednesday. Much thanks to Meredith for bringing the pound cake, which unfortunately nobody had a chance to enjoy. I also ended up with a pile of half cooked hamburgers and hot dogs. It is what it is. That's the first time in 19 years that the run was a complete bust. Hopefully the last, too! Lastly, welcome to several first time runners for the 2022 series. Hope you will be back. In closing, I did note that most of the runners enjoyed the coolness of running in the rain - but I guess I can't say that for runners with strollers! That was not so cool. Hopefully we can get back to normal next week. Hope to see you then. Doug

Week 8 Results

Ever noticed how the wind usually dies down just before the run starts? Back in high school I used to go sailing on Mobile Bay with an older gentleman who had a passion for sailing his Lightning Class sailboat on weekends. One of the things that he taught me was to be back to the boat slip around 5pm, because the wind will be slowing or dying from 6pm to 7pm. He was right, too. I've always remembered that. And, as you know, it applies on land as well as on the water. So that makes our summer runs even tougher, as was the case yesterday, with little or no breeze. Thankfully everyone made it back okay in pretty good shape. I noticed that we drank about twice as much Gatorade as usual. Glad to see you taking care of yourselves, keep it up! Many of you noticed we had a visitor last night. Grace sets the record as our youngest "participant" ever at the age of 1 week and 1 day. Congratulations to Liz and Steve on the birth of their daughter! Also, welcome to Precious for her return, and to Kimberly and Caitlin (Carmen's family) for running with us. Here are the results for run 8. Heads up, we will have our watermelon run on July 12, and our pizza run on the last run (August 2). I'll feed you on those runs, so plan to be here. That's it for now - stay safe and run smart this summer. See you next week. Doug

Week 7 Results

Here are the results from run 7. It appeared that we might have a weather problem, but things cleared up and the temperature dropped 25 degrees after the thunderstorms passed. Thank goodness! Welcome to our 5 new runners (although some have run in previous seasons) - Dozier, Winston, Vera, and Joanne Smith T, and Matt Carter. Great to have you and hope we will see you in future runs! We are halfway through our schedule and have the coolest months ahead of us (LOL). If this week is any indication of summertime heat to come, we are going to need to take precautions in July and August, as always. Keep in mind we have our pizza run and watermelon run ahead of us. I'm looking forward to them. See you next week, Doug.

June 14 Run WILL Take Place

The bad weather is gone and the rain should be out of here by 6pm. The run will take place. However I will not be grilling hamburgers and hot dogs today, please plan accordingly. Doug

Weather Update June 14

As of 2:30pm, weather looks pretty bad, lots of thunderstorm activity. I'm hoping things have settled down by 6pm and as of now am still planning on having our run. Doug

Week 6 Results

Six down, 8 runs to go. Off to a great start! Much thanks to Bob Banks for his help at the finish line. That's what happens when you get a quad injury, you are relegated to helping out! Just kidding, but glad to have his expertise on the line. Also, a big welcome and THANK YOU to Meredith Avera, who surprised us with a box of homemade chocolate chip cookies. They were excellent! She set the bar pretty high (that's a discreet challenge to our other runners - hmmmm?). Hey, goodies are ALWAYS welcome at our runs! Good to have our other new faces and some previous participants - Pete, Nicole, Timothy, James, Molly, Katie, Cal, Jonathan, Kanon, Patrick, and Thomas. Hope to have you back next week. As you check the results of this week's run, keep in mind that if I made an error on your time, I'd like to get it corrected. There is contact information in the "run details" link in the top right margin, or you can comment right here at the bottom of this post. That's it for now, see you next week. Doug

Week 5 Results

We are cruising along, 5 runs in the books! We had a good crowd of about 30, counting all the kids. Welcome to our newcomers and visitors - Robert and Oki, Stephen, Cody, Tate, Knox, and Carrie. Here are a few stats for the series: average timed participants per week - 24, strollers this week - 5, total participants for the series so far - 43, participants with "perfect attendance" - 10. Now that school is out we may have a few more joining us, we shall see. Invite a friend, any and all are welcome. As some of you read on AORTA's website, Misty Carroll was in a serious car accident earlier this week, and has had surgery on both her ankle and arm. Thoughts and prayers go out for her, and we wish her a speedy recovery. Here are the results for this week. See you next week, Doug.