Never did finish this post when I sat down to start. Then Thanksgiving madness busyness descended... Today is the first chance I've had to just sit and get around to a posting. Last week, Friday, I was excited for participating in an inagural 12K, the Hustle for Hydrops, that was being held across the Illinois River from us in the town of Washington. So I guess I'll pick up from there...
Race morning was super windy. Gusts were hitting 30mph, but sustained wind at run time was only about 18-20mph. The temp had me rethinking my race garb with wind chill temperatures at 30. And it was cloudy, grey. No sun to warm my bones. Got everything figured out and we took off for Washington. Got there about 25 minutes before go time, which was plenty of time to use the bathroon, do some stretching and catching up with folks.
A few minutes before gun time, got my speedy high schooler up to the front of the line and positioned myself a little further back. It was a pretty low key event, with more people doing the 5K than the 12. We took off, running through different neighborhoods in Washington. As I reached the first mile, the timer called out "8:21". I wasn't sure I heard him right (cause that is WAY too fast for me, especially as I was going to take this run an extra 12K) so glanced down at my garmin and saw that I was in fact flying dangerously along. I was concentrating on slowing myself down to a more sustainable pace of 9:45min/miles, when I saw a girl up ahead rolling on the ground, screaming in pain. No one was with her, although several people were asking if she needed help and she would scream them away. I stopped when I got to her, as did another woman who had her cell phone and tried to ask the girl if there was someone she should call. At this point of the race, we were on a paved path, slightly widen than a standard sidewalk, with no road access. The girl was incapable of speaking without breaking into screams, so I ran back in the direction where I had come from to the last intersection with a race official. Got the official, we got back to the girl and a runner who was an EMT had stopped and was helping her get her breathing under control to try to control her pain. He had also immobilized her foot/ankle which was apparently the source of the pain. Then 2 of her friends who were also running the race arrived and helped get her standing and supported and ready to carry her up to the road to meet an ambulance. They thanked me and the other gal who stopped when I did, and I proceded on my run (now really no longer a "race"). Pass the 2 mile timer and he calls out "24:18". Cruised around another neighborhood, past my hubs and daughter at the 3 mile mark and explained why I was so late, and they told me that my super fast high schooler was in the lead!
As I approached the 4 mile mark, which is the start of a lollipop out and back, my zippy kid turned the corner, having just passed his 6 mile point and was making his way, still in first, to the finish!! The next runner was about a minute behind him, and while my son is zippy he has no finishing kick, so I was wondering if he would hold his lead.
I'm normally not a fan of out and backs, but this had a few turns along the way, as well a loop through the cemetary where the baby girl who died of hydrops fetalis is buried. I enjoyed seeing the folks at the water station at the 4/6 mile point, as well as a really friendly guy who told me it was downhill from there as I am trotting towards the biggest uphill on the course and the gal at the top of the hill who started woohooing for me when I was still only halfway up, shouting that I had the best form she had seen of all the runners at this point in the race. While I feel fairly confident that there were people ahead of me with pretty wicked good form, I did appreciate her great words of encouragement. Much better than "you're almost done".
I finished the race with an average pace of 10:00/mile, well behind my zippy lad who held his lead and finished first overall! His very first time to do that in a race. Oh. And he ran in a short sleeve t-shirt and shorts. Just like you see him below. Youth.
Sunday. Storm warnings for all of central Illinois. We are under a tornado watch, then a warning. My zippy son volunteers at a retirement home on Sunday mornings and he is sort of trapped there because they will not let him leave until the storms have passed. We get crazy wind, rain and hail, but thankfully no tornados. As I am watching the local channels for update, they are reporting that there is a confirmed tornado sighting in East Peoria, heading northeast towards Washington. At 11:05 half of the neighborhoods that we ran through the day before were wiped away by an EF4 tornado.
While Peoria and the surrounding areas are not considered to be a small town, it does have a small town feel to it because of the different communities that exist here. Outside of the obvious, school and church, Caterpillar is one of the largest employers (it's where my husband works) in the area and it generally takes fewer than 6 degrees of seperation, more like 2, to link someone to someone else. The running community is also a large one, with several different running clubs that overlap and co-mingle. So we have several friends who either lost their entire homes and belongs, or suffered extensive damage.
Monday was a day of uncertainty for everyone, with even residents of the areas impacted being turned away. One woman got a call from her husband who had gone out to get gas for their generator, but wasn't allowed to return home with the gas. For the generator. Monday afternoon my husband was able to get in with a few coworkers to assist his boss who's house had been severely damaged and was trying to salvage as much as possible. Tuesday and Wednesday we both went in to help friends pack up what could be saved, and then took things to the rental homes they had managed to find.
I've never seen in person the impact of a tornado. It defies description. You can see images on TV of trucks wrapped around trees or pieces of lumber imbedded in places it shouldn't. Those images don't even come close to what it looks like in person. It is surreal. It is devastating. It is heartbreaking and horrible.
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