Diddly December

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

The cicadas had been presaging this evening's storm for three days, the slow build up of heat and humidity curiously matching the increase in strength of the cicada's chirruping. 'Chirrup' is a poor word to describe the sound of cicadas, especially when the critters reach their full, deafening strength which can be genuinely excruciating. Thankfully here in Sydney they aren't nearly that loud, and in fact it has been rather pleasant to hear them, especially as they always bring to mind the opening four minutes of my favourite Santana album, Caravanserai, in which they feature prominently. Unlike that album's quiet and pleasant opening track, the storm's build up was dark and ominous, and as I watched it approach, firstly on the Bureau of Meteorology's weather radar, and then from outside in our covered alcove area from where I saw ground stroke after ground stroke of lightning get steadily and worryingly closer. Then as the first fat drops of rain from the storm front fell, the cicadas ceased their song, now in any case largely inaudible as the incessant thunder drowned out nearly all other sounds.

The storm, one of several to sweep across Sydney during the day, luckily spared our suburb the worst of its violence, and in spite of its dramatic approach, gave us just a good drenching of welcome rain and no direct lightning strikes, and certainly none of the golf ball-sized hail and destructive winds that other areas of the city received. It did cause me some inconvenience however, with the train system reduced to chaos by the resulting storm damage, meaning my usual 45 minute trip to work became more than twice as long and making me very late.

The other minor inconvenience caused by this weather was to my morning run, the 31 degrees of heat and 92% humidity causing me to call it off as a generally bad idea. It's a risk always associated with running in the Australian summer, of course, and the occasional cessation of the training program due to weather is to be expected. And with more hot and stormy weather to come, I'm thankful that my immediate running goals are modest and flexible. With Christmas just ten days away, there's a lot of stuff on the calendar to wade through and squeezing in a run here and there is difficult enough anyhow, but I'm keen; we'll see if I can't get something happening, despite it all.