I had a Plan

Well, this is a first.

Having lived in the Midwest my entire life, I can honestly say I have never had a half marathon cancelled due to a hurricane. Until now.

Remember that plan I had? That year-long prep work I had planned out in advance of the Dopey Challenge? The one where I was supposed to do a half marathon every couple of months to keep my mileage base up and have some options to submit proof of time for the challenge? Yeah - that all went down the toilet.

A little refresher...

1. I signed up for the Cincinnati Flying Pig Half Marathon during the first week of May. A week and a half before the race, my hip suddenly hurt so bad that I could barely get out of my car. I was determined to finish the race and ran-walked it to a record slow time. 
2. I signed up for the Chicago Rock N Roll Half Marathon to be run mid-July. Previously-mentioned hip injury will not go away, doctors are perplexed, not one step is run in preparation for the half marathon. Heat wave/high humidity strikes. I did the race anyway and got a new record slow time. 
3. Hip gets better, sign up for Carolina Beach Half Marathon to be run on October 4th, 2 days prior to the proof of time cutoff for Dopey. Training is going well. Times are finally starting to come down. I'm ready to race. Which brings us to...

Hurricane Joaquin.

Less than 12 hours before my flight was to take off for North Carolina, a major storm heading for the East Coast gets upgraded to a category 4 hurricane and is headed straight for Carolina Beach. Race directors cancel the race.

So on Wednesday night I found myself with a cancelled race, a flight in a matter of hours and non-refundable plane tickets. After much thought, a beer, and a consultation with a friend, I decided to still go to North Carolina and try my luck.Thankfully the hurricane didn't make landfall in the US but the area I traveled to experienced record rainfall and flooding.

Even though it wasn't the vacation I was planning - running a race, touring the city, hitting the beach - I could still visit my friend and eat some seafood. Which I did. In the rain. Every day.

Every. Single. Day.

Sometimes it rained hard.

Sometimes it rained less hard.

But it seemed never ending. 

At least it was obvious that the race directors made the right call, as evidenced by the photo in Monday's paper of where the race would have taken place.

So now I'm back from North Carolina and I have no last-chance race to submit proof of time. I do have a time submitted but it was from a race a week before I had surgery to remove a 12.5 inch, 10 pound cyst from my abdomen so, yeah, it's not my fastest time. Unfortunately it is the fastest time I have in the allowable time frame. It's not the end of the world. I shouldn't be in the last corrals. But I had a plan...

Oh...and the day after I get back from North Carolina it looks like this there:

Sigh...