Was that Me Sneezing, or Was that the Sky?

"Seriously?!" The wind tunnel street on which I live was wind-tunneling away this morning, throwing the sheets of rain directly into the side of my face.

I shivered and sneezed, all at the same time. This was going to be fun!

The cold still hasn't gone away. But, Sunday is the first day of my running calendar. And it's bad form to miss the first run of the week! That would have you start the week already behind.

So I finished walking down the stairs. And sneeze again. And again. Booh.

"At least it's not super cold", I think to myself as I force myself to start running into the rain and wind on Eastern Parkway.

My absolute least favorite weather is cold rain. Blizzard on, as long as it doesn't turn to rain.

At least it wasn't super cold.

Amazingly, several people showed up to the run, despite the rain. Craft Beer, the Vivacious Redhead, Ivy League and Ponytail all braved the weather to come out. Craft Beer didn't surprise me because he does all those crazy mud runs.

Heck, I was surprised I was out!

The park was flooded. So we headed outside again, though we took the easier, counter-clockwise direction.

Finally, the rain died down a bit. I ran with Ponytail most of the time. It was good to see her: our schedules have not been overlapping at all. That seems to be the story with most peoples' schedules and mine, actually. I hope next semester will be better.

When you work most of the time and spend the rest doing crazy running stuff or reading, it's hard when you no longer see most of the people you used to do the running stuff with. There goes most of your social interaction for the year!

Turning onto Ocean, we pass this one man. I guess he didn't really like being passed. He started dogging us all down Ocean, just about 100 feet behind us. I could hear his heavy footfalls.

When we turned onto Flatbush, Ponytail said to go ahead. So I decide to catch Ivy League, who was way up ahead, dodging raindrops.

And here comes this same guy. Every time I speed up, he speeds up, too. But not to pass me: no, he just seems to want to run RIGHT NEXT TO ME. In fact, if I slow down a bit, which I tried as an experiment, he'd slow down, too.

And this kept up all the way up the hill. I supposed I could have gone faster and left him but I still had that cold, which I could feel in my lungs and legs. And I didn't want to race. So why in the heck was this guy trying to race me?

I met Ivy League near the top of the hill. Reaching him, I slowed down. And the heavy-footsteps dude slowed down, too. This was irritating me so much that, when we got to the top and around to GAP, I yelled "Let's do the second loop the other way around!"

Getting Ivy League's attention, Ivy League came to a halt and doubled back. Confident in his 'win', the heavy-footsteps dude continued on around to Prospect Park West. Whew! Finally rid of him.

Plus, by stopping, we got a chance to wish the Engineer good luck on his cross-country 15k! He stopped by GAP to say hi and to let us know that it wasn't some crazy stalker but, instead, him, that had been screaming at us from a car on Flatbush.

In fact, thankfully, we didn't do another loop of the park, at all. Craft Beer went home and the Vivacious Redhead and Ponytail did another half mile with us down Eastern Parkway before heading home.

Ivy League and I kept going, down Eastern Parkway, past the end of Lincoln, and a bit into East New York. With the wind in our faces and the miles we had already completed, I was really feeling the cold by now. I had that thickness and that tickling, back-of-the-throat feeling.

How do you describe how you feel when you are exercising with a cold? It's so unique, it's instantly recognizable but almost impossible to describe? Is it like pornography, where "you know it when you see it?"

Back up Eastern Parkway, to Lincoln, where we enjoyed a bit of a tailwind and some more driving rain. I left Ivy League to the rest of his run and raced home. About 10 miles.

Now to figure out how to get warm, so that I can start that grading!


Ah. The life of a rock star.