Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

That in itself is a sign something has gone hinky. Time was you could set your watch by a late afternoon pop-up thunderstorm somewhere in the vicinity.

 

Last summer we went more than a month without any rain at all. The bottom of the drainage ditch that runs along our yard is always swampy at the bottom. You'll sink in up to at least your ankles if you step in it. By last September, for the first time I can remember in almost 20 years in this house, it was dry and firm enough to stand on.
This year, though, we're actually an inch above our normal rainfall total for the month and anywhere from 5 to 15 inches for the year depending on where you are. It'll even out in short order, I'm sure.

 

98 degrees with a heat index of 105 in DC today. And this idiot is going to finish with like 20,000 steps in this shit. Whatever. Gatorade, copious water, the occasional Narragansett… I’ll survive

 

We have a 5K in town tonight. They start at 8 p.m., right as the sun is about to set, when the hourly forecast has it at 90/98 with about 60 percent humidity. There's also a pre-race street festival associated with it that starts at 6, which means everyone will have time to get a couple of beers in them before running.
This should be fun.

 

Batman, don't you live in Mississippi? Seriously, what is the alternative for road races in the summer? Hold them at 3 a.m.?

I used to run a lot of road races in my 20s, 30s and 40s. Anything over 60 could get uncomfortable. And that was in states with low humidity.

 

We moved the start of our annual century charity ride to 6:30 am (sun was up at 6:03 today) due to the heat. One of the charity organizers asked today how many years we had left doing it in late June rather than September or May due to climate change.

 

The thing about Texas is the weather could be shit everywhere else and it's fucking gorgeous here, and vice versa.

Lately it's been hot and dry, but no more than normal for June. Got up to 94 today. No 100s in the forecast yet, but we don't get there typically until right around the Fourth.

 

May. I got a feeling that September is going to be hot as the hinges of hell.

 

Not quite that early, but close. Most of the ones in the summer start at 7 or 7:30 a.m. Some are 8 or 8:30, and they're done by 10 before it gets really hot.
This one has the gimmick of a nighttime race to make it unique, so they start at 8 p.m.
It seemed like everyone made it through OK. I didn't see any signs of trouble. Couple of years ago at this race, the women's winner was a teenager from Wisconsin who was down there on vacation. She started walking off after crossing the finish line, and when I caught up to her around the corner she doubled over and started throwing up. I decided that was one interview that could wait.

 

Sounds like a high school cross country meet!

 

The fall of 2019 was special. Stayed in the 90s right up to Oct. 9 without a breath of fall air. On Oct. 20 we got tornadoes, and on Oct. 28 I covered an outdoor event where a patio heater was woefully inadequate.

 

It was 77 this morning when I got up at 5:30.

There is a pretty famous 8K not far from where I grew up. I did it twice. The race starts at 10 or 11 p.m. in July. It's still miserable. The greatest part of it is when you go through neighborhood, the locals stand in their yards spraying water hoses for you to run through.