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October 19, 2005
This has to be just a bad dream
That's what I thought when I woke up this morning. When I went to bed last night the weather was certainly on my mind. The giant Great Floridian machine had been running for the past week and was moving full speed ahead, The bike racks are up, fencing pulled tight, the changing bag holders in alignment and everything is running ahead of schedule for this weekend's big dance.
As I was laying in bed half asleep I heard something about Wilma being the most powerful hurricane ever. I thought my mind was just playing games with me. When I fell asleep she was barely a category one storm. As I drifted in and out of sleep I heard it again. I quickly jumped out of bed and turned on the weather channel and went online to check-out the weather sites. I could not believe what I was seeing, Wilma was a cat 5 storm with the lowest recorded pressure ever!!! What is up with that? This has been a challenging year for us, especially following last year's crazy hurricane season. We have had our share of weather issues this year as well, but in late October the odds of a major storm hitting Central Florida are almost nil.
It is only appropriate that if a storm was going to play with my mind it would be named Wilma. Growing up with a name like Fred, especially in the "Flinstones era", I was used to comments like "where's Wilma" and being called "Freddy Flinstone" by my childhood friends.
Wilma was certainly on my mind yesterday. After a few weeks without any storms, the media was in hurricane hype withdrawal. Once Wilma was named, the media's weather hype machines cranked up to top speed. As a result the emails and phone calls started pouring in. You cannot blame the athletes, many are already in transit to Clermont with the biggest travel push taking place on Thursday. When you are traveling half way around the world or across the country to race in the shadows of a powerful hurricane, you have to be concerned.
Unfortunately there is not much we can tell everyone except to stay tuned to our website for the latest up to the minute information. The absolute last thing I want to do is cancel the race. This is our 15th birthday party for the GFT and we have been working hard to make certain it is the best race ever.
The trouble with hurricane forecasting is that the forecast storm paths are not very reliable a few days out. It will be a tough day for us because we will have to spend a great deal of time on contingency planning and dealing with tons of calls and emails related to the weather. This is time and energy that was already allocated to other aspects of the race. Unfortunately all we can tell everyone is to stay tuned to our website for details. No decisions will be made today (Wednesday). For right now the race is on as planned and I'm looking forward to greeting the athletes at tonight's Welcome Reception.
If the storm heads our way, we'll notify everyone of our plans on Thursday afternoon. We have a meeting already scheduled with our emergency services team and local police. Whatever decision we make will most likely be made at that meeting.
Stay tuned...
Posted by Fred at 05:51 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | More in: Great Floridian
The bigger you are the harder you fall..
I learned that lesson the hard way last week when I finally was able to start training again. I started off the summer with great ambitions. I was going to train hard all summer so I could race a fall marathon. Then after the GFT, when thing slow down for the season, I had planned to concentrate on mountain biking and kayaking so I could set my sights on a multi-day advenutre race this spring. Well my marathon training was non-existant this summer so I backed out of the two fall marathons I had signed up for. I'm not giving up though and I plan to get back on some sort of track next week after the GFT.
While on the way back from my run I hit a crack in a sidewalk and started stumbling forward. I thought for a second I was going to recover from my stumble, but no such luck. Down I went right into a nice row of shrubs. The shrubs saved me from serious injury, although I had a few small braches imbedded in my chest. Thank goodness I fell when no cars were passing by. I quickly pulled myself up and evaluated the dammage. I ended up with a bloody knee, elbow and hand along with a scaped up chest....and the shrub, well it will pull through but it doesn't look very pretty right now.
Now if my training had gone as planned this summer I would have been 20 pounds lighter and the shrub would still be in one piece.
Posted by Fred at 05:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | More in: Random Thoughts
