Well, I survived. Nine nights in the trenches of the 69th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Classic (otherwise known as "the rally"). We were busy as hell parking cars and bikes at the Buffalo Chip on Monday (Toby Keith) and Wednesday (Aerosmith) and pretty slow the other days, although Hinder and Buckcherry on Thursday and Friday brought in a decent number. As many know from the national news, it wasn't the smoothest of sailing at the Chip this year. Seven songs into Aerosmith's set, Steven Tyler took a nose dive off the stage and ended up with a few stitches and a broken shoulder. I wasn't there and after I heard what had happened, I was glad I wasn't....120,000 plus mad rally-goers isn't exactly my idea of a good situation. Tyler wasn't the only lead singer to suffer this year. Josh Todd of Buckcherry tried to get through their set despite bronchitis, but called it quits about a half hour in. I wasn't there for that either (I just saw Buckcherry back in February). To add to that excitement, it was a stormy week weather-wise. The big one hit the Chip on Friday nightat about 6:00. I carpooled there all week with two other guys from Belle and that had been my night to drive, so I had the family Durango there. The storm rolled in and started dropping golf ball plus sized hail and lots of it. We took shelter in the Durango and couldn't hear ourselves think. After about 10 minutes of solid pounding, it finally turned to rain and then stopped as suddenly as it had started. We got out to survey the damage and found the poor Durango had taken some abuse. Lots of little dents, a few big ones and a broken tail light. Luckily, we still have full coverage on it. Others weren't so lucky as we saw a lot of cars with busted out windows that night. In any case, the rally is over for another year, the bikes are gone and along with them the constant roar of V-twins (and the occasional roar of thunder and hail). Aw, silence....
Anyhow, as for running, I had some weather issues there too, but ended up with a decent week overall:
Monday - Rest
Tuesday - 9 miles. Legs felt heavy, especially the last 3 miles. As a bonus, I did get whistled at by a biker chick (at least I hope it was the chick and not the dude that was with her).
Wednesday - 6.1 slow recovery miles.
Thursday - 8.9 miles. This was like running in a damn sauna. Thunderstorms had rolled through early in the morning and by the time I ran at lunchtime, the sun was out and the humidity was hovering at around 95%. Every inch of my clothing was soaked with sweat by the time I got done, but my pace was actually fairly good for an easy run.
Friday - 4 miles. Another humid one.
Saturday - 19.4 miles. Shannon ran a 10K in Custer in the morning and as soon as she finished I took off on the Mickelson Trail and headed for Hill City. The goal was to run for 3 hours, so I had to tack a few on after Hill City since it's only 15.5 miles on the trail. I ended up back at our pre-designated meeting spot approximately 15 seconds before Shannon rolled in with the car to pick me up.
Sunday - 10.3 miles. This was supposed to be longer (2 hours) but Mother Nature intervened. As soon as I walked outside to start the run, I noticed a large thunderstorm to the south over Spearfish (12 miles away). I figured it would act like a thunderstorm usually does around here and move off to either the east or southeast, away from Belle. I started getting sprinkled on about 5 miles into my run as I was watching large lightning bolts hit the Spearfish area, but still thought I was in the clear. About 7.5 miles in, I realized that the storm was heading right for Belle. At that moment, I was running along the highway to the southeast of town, totally exposed. Not good. I hightailed it back into town and by that time it was pouring rain. I ended up back at the house after an hour and twenty-four minutes of running and totally soaked to the bone, but thankfully not electrified.
Total - 57.7 miles
Not quite as many miles as planned, but it's taper, so I'm not too worried about 3 or 4 missed miles. Lean Horse is only two weeks away now. Better safe than sorry.
This week I'm heading back to my hometown of Chester, MT to help my mom out as she's going through a tough time (to put it simply). I'm looking forward to exploring some running routes around there. Although I lived in Chester for 18+ years of my life, I have done very, very little running there since I absolutely despised running back then. Anyone who knew me back then will probably think I'm totally off my rocker now when they hear that I'm running a 50 miler soon. Should be interesting...
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