Xtreme 10 = Xtreme Disappointment

   This weekend was the Xtreme 10 mile race in Waterfall Glen.  I had been looking forward to the race because I grew up nearby Waterfall Glen and as a child, we would go hiking in the glen.  It was always a wonderful excursion and tons of fun to see the Waterfalls.  My Dad ran the race last summer, and for whatever reason I was unable to do it last year.. can't remember why!   But he LOVED it and has pretty much talked non-stop about it for the last year, about how it was his favorite race and he loved the fact that they grill brats for everyone at the finish line.

    So this year I decided to do it with my Dad, I was excited but nervous because I'm a little bit behind in my training and have only done a 6 mile run up to this point.  This week in Chicago has been unbelieveably hot, naturally leading to a breaking point in the atmosphere.  Of course it decides to blow-up friday night into Saturday.  We had some CRAZY lightening and thunder friday night. 
  
    I woke up at 5:15am race morning and it was still raining and lightening.  My Dad and I and a family friend all made the trek down to Waterfall Glen, with it getting darker and more ominous the farther South we got!  OH NO!  It was actually pretty hysterical to see the number of runners that were still planning on doing the run!  Talk about dedicated runners!!!  The field and area had little streams of water running everywhere, some were pretty significantly deep!  Even after they announced that they might be calling the race, there was a lot of booing! I mean we were already there, already mentally prepared to tackle this race in these conditions.  I mean it isn't called the Xtreme 10 for nothing! Around 7am, they announced that they had to cancel the race, that the decision had been taken out of the race director's hands because of the extent of the lightening, stretching from rockford all the way to where we were in the lemont area! Supposedly it was only going to get worse!  Not sure that I believe it since this is what it looked like a few hours later, with the rain being completely stopped by the time we made it home...

   Looks like a gorgeous day to me!  Atleast we were able to still get our sweet shirts out of it!

    Hopefully better luck next year and no lightening to ruin the race!  But in this case it was definitely better to be safe than sorry!