BYE BYE IRMA!!!

Third Friday of the week.

 Well, Irma came and went!

Irma: 9-11-17

It's been 13 years since Florida has gotten bamboozled by hurricanes. We were struck with 4 hurricanes in a row, one every 2 weeks, in 2004: Charley, Francis, Ivan and Jeanne. Ivan just wouldn't leave! that one kept coming back over and over! My son was born the night Hurricane Francis struck. That was loads of fun trying to get to the midwifery center while in active labor during a hurricane after the mandated curfew to be off the roads, dodging downed trees and sideways rain. Anyway, all is safe and sound here, today, thank goodness.

As fortune would have it my city got off pretty easily with a few proverbial scrapes and bruises.

Tree on power line near my house

My neighbor's yard

There are still some folks with no power and some flooding and my heart goes out to them.

But when I see the utter devastation in the Keys, Miami, Naples... and Jacksonville and St. Augustine just an hour and a half north of me I thank my lucky starts that I am in the position I'm in. Now I can help others.

It was scary to hear the screeching wind and gusts as they came and went. I found myself holding my breath each time the wind kicked up really hard hoping none of my roof would fly off or that a tree or tree branch wouldn't wind up as part of my roof. All this as Irma passed through my area as a weakening category 1 hurricane. I simply cannot imagine what a cat 5 would be like...

I made the best of a bad situation. With no power I was still able, and desperate enough, to make coffee. It took an hour for the water to heat up enough by candle power to make coffee! But the coffee was quite smooth, lol! I will be investing in some camping equipment....

But now comes the part of the storm that, unless you live in an area that gets this kind of weather, most people would not understand. This is the part where so many more deaths will occur. The surge.  It takes days to maybe even weeks for water levels in rivers and lakes and wetlands to get back to normal. But to get back to normal the water that was pushed and sucked inland by the hurricane starts to rush back to where it normally is but is accompanied by excess water from the rain and, if you're on the coast, ocean.

A highway I travel everyday

It's been 2 days since Irma and now we are starting to see some real flooding in a lot of areas. Rivers are still rising up to 35 feet above normal. Roads are starting to flood due to water overload in the marshes and swamps our area is inundated with. This is when things like alligators and snakes start to become a real problem... This is a pic of a highway I travel everyday. The right side under the water is where the 2 west bound lanes are. The water has flooded one of the east bound lanes leaving only one lane for traffic to use in each direction. This highway was totally clear of water the afternoon after Irma hit. ...surge!

I so badly wanted to get out and run the morning after Irma passed. It was so cool and the wind, while still appreciably strong, was really nice to feel. But, not having slept a wink all night long I was simply too tired. However, after being a nervous Nelly for a couple of days prior to Irma my silly cat was able to finally relax and get some shut eye, lol.

Now it is hot, again. I spent all day yesterday cleaning debris from my yard and now my knee is bothering me. To add to that, I think I might be getting sick. I have felt a little weird the last few days like my sinuses were off, I feel oddly bloated and my body aches, especially my back, shoulders and ankles.

To be fare, part of me wonders if it is because I have been eating a lot more wheat than I'm used to over the last couple weeks. I know when I do that my joints start to feel uncomfortable and I do feel bloated. When I lay off the wheat I start to feel better. So, from this point forward, no more wheat. This will be interesting to see if it is virus or wheat.

I know I have gained weight! I can feel it. I refuse to get on the scale right now. I need to get back on my badly neglected WW plan, again. I didn't even try to track during Hood to Coast, and in all honesty, you really can't. It is very hard to do that. But, admittedly, I also stopped tracking about a week before and ever since I've been back from Oregon.... :-D . Of course, I really didn't care to track before and during Irma!

I did go to my WW meeting last Sat. and I was up a little over 2 lbs. I'm actually relieved that was all. I know it is more now and I don't want to depress myself so I will just have a few good days on WW and then I will weigh.

As for my running times at Hood to Coast I was really pleased with what I saw. There is a system that one of the team members uses to predict more accurate finish times for each leg a runner has. But for it to be accurate you need to use your best and ideal conditions 10k time. Well, since I had lost almost 25lbs since my last race, which was a half marathon, I had no clue what my 10k, or any distance, time was anymore. So, all I had to go on was my summer training run times. Since I have been running a 10minute/mile average in the Florida summer weather that is what I had to use. He predicted my first leg to be at an 8:45 pace and my other two legs to be around 10:20. I was happy with that except I thought that first leg time was nutty since I can't run 5.23 miles that fast-even if it is downhill.

Turns out I apparently ran my first leg at a 7:50ish pace and the other two legs (6.23 miles and 5.3miles, respectively) around a 10 min/mile pace.  I was floored. I can't wait to see what it will be like to run 35lbs lighter than now!

Well, I'll leave you with a really neat pre-Irma sky photo I took. At least hurricanes can also bring some odd weather that can show some really unique and beautiful things that don't occur otherwise.

Pink sky with a rainbow...pre-Irma.