Sweat Once A Day

First things first, I decided to keep the skirt.  It grew on me.  Magically, as I was deciding, a second skirt appeared at my doorstep.  Seems runningskirts.com accidentally shipped my order twice.  I took it as a sign it was meant to be and am keeping the original (the second "messenger" skirt will shortly be making it's way back home).

Today I was scheduled to run 14 miles.  Yesterday was fairly warm and today was slated to be "slightly warmer than yesterday."  According to the weather pages, Sunday will be about 20 degrees cooler than today.  I hummed and hawed about maybe putting off the long run 'til Sunday but decided to just get out there and get it done.

I know some parts of the country are broiling right now, but it was mighty hot out for San Francisco today (86 degrees at the end of my run).  One of the reasons I wanted to move here was because I thought it was 49 degrees year-round!  I visited in July a few years ago and it was super chilly.  Perfect running weather, I thought.  Well, days like this make Boyfriend happy (he had visions of us moving to "Sunny California") but this warm weather weenie can't take the heat so well.

Despite the heat I felt pretty good out there today.  I went through over double the amount of water I'd normally take in and ended the run a sweaty, salty mess.  I felt like a vampire as I dodged into every shadow I could.  In the shade the temperature was not so bad, but the cloudless, direct sunlight really raised the temperatures fast.  I capped off the run by conquering The Hill again!  I figure if I can do it at the end of a hot, long run I've probably got the ascent covered now.

Some strange things I saw on the run today:

At mile 0.5 I saw a woman and a teenager pushing a tortoise on a skateboard up The Hill.  The tortoise was by far the largest pet tortoise I've ever seen.  It totally obscured the skateboard so that you'd think he had wheels growing out of his shell.

At mile 3.5 I saw a fire truck with it's ladder raised up towards the sky in the middle of a parking lot by the beach.  There was nothing at all nearby for the ladder to be going to.  There was no one on the ladder.  It looked very odd.

Oh, I've also had a major rant about Golden Gate Park's sprinkler system.  They have got the worse sprinkler system ever.  It always shoots all over the sidewalks causing much dodging and trepidation by the tourists.  There are even a few sprinklers which seem to be aimed directly at the sidewalk.  What a waste of water!  Today though, these ill-aimed sprinklers were lifesavers as I ran through them to cool down.  I still think they're wasting a major amount of water, but I won't be mad at them for making me run around them when it's cold anymore.  

There's one span of sprinklers in an area I like to call "Jurassic Park" (because of the Jurassic-like palms) that really gets you drenched good.  They aim almost skyward and the majority of the water falls down on the sidewalk and makes me think I'm on a movie set with fake rain.  I usually get soaked on this span because there's no way to run off the walkway. Today for the first time ever, when I actually was looking forward to a good drenching, I managed to have a perfectly timed run that missed the swipe of every single one of the sprinklers.  I couldn't believe it!  Bleh.