Last month Hurricane Irene came swinging through the North East. The day Irene hit Eastern Pennsylvania also happened to be a marathon training day for me and my buddy Sean. Since it rained during my first marathon I thought it might actually be “best practices” to go out for a training run in these rainy conditions. Plus, I would get the chance to check out all of the local streams going “bananas” with way too much water.

The run was supposed to be only 12 miles, but we ended up running 14 by the end of the day! This was caused by us making the route up as we went along to find the best views of local streams. After getting about half way through the run I came to realize that I really enjoy the more challenging and difficult runs during my marathon build up. Not to say that the route we picked was the most difficult to run, but swerving around fallen and falling branches along the run was great. I really didn’t feel like I had run the 12 mile distance by the time I made my way home. Only after mapping the route did I find out we went over our mileage.

Cool Stuff

Some of the cooler stuff that happened while were running were.

• Getting fully turned around by a whole field being flooded.
• Figuring out extremely large puddle crossings. The finally solution after 15 minutes of “problem solving” was to simply walk through them and run in soaked shoes.
• Seeing Kerr Park totally under water. This validated the concerns made by the Borough over placing a skatepark there.

I also wanted to get some photos while we were running, so I put my iPhone into a sandwich bag and brought it along for the run. So you can thank my Macgyver ingenuity for the photos that accompany this post.

Shameless Plug

This year’s Philadelphia marathon is actually my third time running 26.2 miles, so I thought I would also try and raise a couple dollars for my skatepark project (Downingtown Skatepark Organization) with this effort. Since my time might not be totally embarrassing this year I won’t feel as awkward sending out a follow-up email with my race recap and time to all who donate. If you would also like to donate to this effort please click on the image below.
* Remember that all donations are tax deductible and come with a receipt;)