Today we had a big activity planned. Nothing really important, only that we wanted to get together with some friends at a park. If we got rained out, it would just mean that we would try and schedule it again in the future. But, we had been psyched up for this for a couple of weeks.
With all the rain we had been having this week, we were concerned that we would not be able to eat watermelon and throw a football together. However, it did not rain today and only got up to 90 degrees. When we got to the park at 5:00 this evening it was a nice 84 degrees. It cooled on down to 81 by the time we left, four hours later.
There was one complication with the rain though. This is a two level park and has a small lake in it with lots of running trails. You can go up the hills to the upper level which is even with the ground level of the area, or go down to what looks like an area that had been strip mined years before. The lower level was totally flooded! It was a huge lake. The difference in the two levels is probably 20 feet and the water level was up maybe 5 feet higher than normal.
We had a good time and I got to have a short chat with one of the elite runners from the area. This park is a very popular training spot for runners. I saw Joel running for the first 2 hours we were there. He ran with different people at different paces and was doing some sprints during this time too. He ran the 10K with me this weekend and won in a time that was 21 minutes faster than my time. This is the first time I had met him and he invited me to train with them and their coach. He assured me that there were old people who trained with them as well and that I could find a pace group that would fit my speed.
