Last Monday, when the sun was sparkling over clear blue skies, Megan began planning a get-together for her birthday that week. Since the weather was so nice, she decided a run and a swim after would be a great idea for Friday. However, as Friday dawned, Ottawa was plagued with numerous thunderstorms, and torrential downpours that lead to over 90mm of rain falling on the city in just one day. Of course, that was no reason for us to give up on a great run, so on Friday evening, Karl, Megan, Katie, Andre, Anna, and I headed out on the trails in Gatineau Park. Unfortunately, none of us thought to bring a camera, much less a waterproof one. However, Dave McMahon (XCZone.tv) was also out running in Gatineau Park that evening, so all pictures in this article are from him.
Our first clue as to the state of the trails was a swollen stream running along the side of the road, barring our entrance to the trail. However, some of us were able to show our natural steeplechase talents and jump over the stream, while others ended up with wet feet, or slipping in the mud. However, we soon after realised, that none of us would be keeping dry feet, as the trail in front of us now looked something like this.
We spent the next twenty or so minutes running through trails completely covered in water. Sometimes the water was only ankle-deep, other times it almost reached our knees. Several times, we had to stop to cross some very large streams that would normally be easy to jump across. However, all the rain had caused the streams to grow, and were moving fast enough, that we were tempted to use sportyaks from OWL to raft down them!
A similar stream to one of the many we crossed. Fortunately, the only stream-related injury was an extremely bruised shin from smashing against a rock.
If we weren’t sure where the trail was going, we just followed the water.
It felt like we didn’t need to go to a lake to go swimming.
That’s a lot of water!
Once we had safely arrived back at Megan and Karl’s house, we decided that all the rain and water in our run had soaked us so much that swimming wouldn’t make any difference. We all quickly dried off then headed over to the Chelsea pub to enjoy some post rainy-run quesadillas and fish & chips.
"Setting the Stage. Setting the Pace.
La mise en scène. Au rythme du client."