Case Study: The Great Flood

Once in a while, I have a particularly eventful walk. I will document these with "Case Study" posts.

Date: Saturday, August 27, 2016
Start time: 7 AM
Weather: Low 60s, cloudy and humid, occasional misting.

I knew there was some mild flooding in my area, and I had a great contingency plan for the couple of points where I anticipated I would encounter high water. So I set out on my 14-mile route with confidence. This was to be my last week at 14 miles before moving up to 16. I was feeling great and hit two miles at 25:25, ready to take the trail through the first park on my route. I glanced over toward the park and saw...water. Lots of water. About 2 feet of water covering the entire park. A look of horror on my face (while keeping pace! I felt so proud.), I said "WOW. Plan B," and continued north up the same street. In a couple miles it would meet up with my usual route, although a few miles would be cut off since I was basically taking a shortcut farther away from the river. I figured, I'll go up to my usual route, go around the lake like I usually do, and see how things are at the other river-adjacent park.

I hit the lake shortly after the one-hour mark and started my usual counter-clockwise traverse to the other side. I headed past the bathrooms and saw...water. About 30-40 yards of deep water covering the entire trail. The LAKE had flooded. This is odd, because it's fairly isolated from the river, so it almost never floods. "Well played, Lake," I said, and turned tail and headed back to where I came from before.

I made it back past Flooded Park #1 after about an hour 40. Of course, because people are weird and gross, I saw an opened condom on the ground that had definitely NOT been there on my way out, because I would have noticed it. So sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 AM on a Saturday in my small city, somebody threw a condom on the street. This is the kind of experience you don't get on a treadmill at the local gym. I headed for downtown Main Street and went south for several miles (stopping at my workplace gym to use the restroom and refill my water). At the dog park I made a right and headed toward the local college campus that is a couple miles from my house. At this point I was totally improvising based on areas I thought would be dry enough to walk on, and give me enough distance to at least clear 14 miles. It was okay if I went a bit farther, since I'd been doing 14s for weeks, but I did not want to shortchange myself. As I stated in an earlier blog post, I do not wear a GPS watch. I wear a cheapo $35 Timex Ironman and I carry 24 oz of Powerade (now watered down), and the clothes on my back. Very low-tech.

After about 12 miles I reached campus. Seeing all the lithe youngsters in their teeny shorts was truly inspiring. I was trying to figure out how far I'd gone. In fact, I made it all the way home feeling pretty good physically just by daydreaming about how maybe I'd gone 15 miles, and what a pace it would be! I got back to the house in 3:13, with no clue what that actually meant, pace-wise. I mapped it out and was disappointed that it was only 14.6 miles. But I did learn a couple lessons about walking in a flood-pocalypse.

1) When the ground is wet and lightly covered in sand, dirt, or leaves, it is hard to keep a fast pace. Not only do slippery conditions make people's strides change slightly (trying subconsciously to keep balance and not fall), but since walkers' feet are in contact with the ground so much, they can actually slide back a little bit on each step. If you conservatively estimate that your foot slides back 1/4" each step, with 1600 steps per mile, that's 400 inches per mile farther that you have to walk. I basically walked at least 1/10th mile farther just from slipping around.

2) It's much easier to focus when things go as planned. If you are uncertain of where you need to go, you will slow down subconsciously.

3) Walking on a cloudy day is AMAZING. Highly recommended.

The good: I felt great. Hips were loose. Cardio was on point. Refueling was on point. I have 3 more months of training and I'm already near a PR marathon pace in suboptimal conditions (and at a PR marathon pace in better conditions) for long workouts. This is where a walker wants to be!