When Running Outside in the Rain Beats Working-Out at the Gym...
This is an update to my ActiveRain Old Farts Club Fitness challenge for 2017. My primary fitness activity is Running; it gets me Outdoors, and provides a relatively inexpensive way to obtain good aerobic conditioning. Through the years the Winter season has the most difficult because of the weather conditions - moisture and low-temperature, to keep on schedule.
Running on the Salmon Creek Trail, there are at least two types of flooding that can keep a person off the trail, and looking for another running trail or venue. One type of flood is when Salmon Creek itself becomes swollen with rainwater and/or snow-melt/runoff. This type of flood will easily keep a person off the trail as the swiftness of the current can be dangerous, and there won't likely be any other trail user nearby to render aid.
The second type of flood occurs when the Columbia River itself is flooding which usually occurs when sufficient snow-melt fills the river. With the warmer weather early this week, this is the type of flooding I was faced with on a good 1/8th mile of the trail covered up to one-foot deep.
With the weekend in the Valley with the temp hitting the low 60's for the first time this year, combined with an abundance of rain in the past few days, the Columbia River has risen considerably. The effect on lower Salmon Creek is to cause the flood plain to fill with water, and start covering the trail at its low points, such as the photo above.
Since this type of flood creates somewhat calm areas of water in the basin, and that it was very shallow for this stretch of the flooded trail, I had a choice to make: either go through and complete the distance or, turnaround and double-up on the amount of trail this "obstacle" removed from the regular route.
Since there was no chance my socks would get wet, I forged ahead through the water, and thankfully it was not too cold! Along the way there were quite a few Ducks working a "new" area for them that expressed their displeasure at my intruding on their feast.
To be sure if there is any more significant warm rainfall, I expect the trail will be covered even deeper and more extensively, and that will require running at a back-up location or, doubling up on the drier sections of trail. But until that water comes, I suspect I'll still prefer to run through the water than trying to run inside on an overly small and boring track!
I loved the feeling of freedom in running, the fresh air, the feeling that the only person I'm competing with is me. -
Wilma Rudolph
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