This weekend Tropical Storm Phillippe is due to blow into Nova Scotia, bringing strong winds and heavy rain, mostly overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning. This weekend is also supposed to be the time for the Valley Harvest Marathon in and around Wolfville and Grand-Pré. Currently the various races are still on, but I've decided to switch to doing a "virtual" race instead, on my own schedule. While a brisk 5K in stormy weather could be amusing, I had signed up to do the half-marathon, and two hours (or hopefully less) of pushing my limits against fierce gusts and occasional torrential rain seems neither fulfilling nor healthy nor even much fun.
As some of the course is across the below-sea-level dykelands and marshes of Grand-Pre, stormy enough weather could turn this into a complete opposite of Not Since Moses. My guess is that the whole event might get cancelled anyhow at the last minute, and I wasn't interested in waking up before dawn and driving an hour up to Wolfville just to turn around and go home again.
Anyhow, this means that every single race I've signed up for this year has been cancelled due to weather:
Not Since Moses was was cancelled at the last minute in August due to surprise storm systems blowing through. Since it requires just the right combination of tides and phases of the moon etc this couldn't be rescheduled.
Beat Beethoven, a fun-sounding low-key run by the waterfront accompanied by music in September, was also cancelled at the last minute due to, once again, surprise storm systems blowing through. The post-run (indoor) concert still happened, and the run has been rescheduled for December, which seems unlikely to have great running conditions either.
And finally this weekend's Valley Harvest runs are scheduled in the shadow of a tropical storm. At least we could see this one coming a few days in advance.
It's been a weird summer weather-wise, with drought, wildfires, heavy storms, flooding, and several weeks of strangely grey conditions - but we've also had some absolutely perfect lovely weather as well, often for an entire week before one of the races, and then it suddenly takes a turn for the worse. So really it's more about bad luck than anything else.
Usually I would have more events in my running calendar, but I was out of town when the Bluenose runs happened in May, and the fun (and mostly flat) Maritime Race Weekend events in Eastern Passage aren't happening this year. I need to find some more runs to do.
At the end of the day, the health benefits come from preparing for a race much more than from the race itself, but I've always enjoyed the group excitement of a race. Getting moving as the starting gun fires reminds me a bit of the thrill of stepping out on stage for a performance, but without the worry of forgetting your part or the anxiety that everybody is watching you. Here's hoping I finally get the chance to do some racing in 2024.