Ah summer...longer days, warmer temps and storms.

Because it's Colorado, and there's always a catch to every season!

It's the biggest tease: the weather is great, I have more light in the day to run, but those pesky storms like to rudely intrude on my training plans!

Running in the morning is out most days -- I start work around 4:30 a.m., so I'd be looking at a 1-2 a.m. start time if I were to run before work!  Plus, who am I kidding, I hate running in the morning!  Outside of high school and college cross country practices, I have always run as late as possible.  So it's not like it ever happens on my days off.

Which leaves me, every year, during those peak days of training, picking fights with the storm season.

I'm training for my first Pikes Peak Ascent this summer...you know, the very place you want to be when those dark clouds roll in!  The challenge this season will be getting plenty of time on the mountain and/or at high elevation while staying storm-safe!

Two of the three scariest runs I've ever had involved lightning.  One, last summer, I checked the radar before heading to Barr Trail and it showed everything completely clear over the next few hours.  I checked the forecast and it didn't mention storms.  Our meteorologist at work (I work in news) told me later the storm caught everyone off guard.  But the other, which happened during my first summer in the Springs (2011), was me doing absolutely everything wrong.

Being a late-day runner, I thought I was being smart when I got to the Elk Park trailhead off the Pikes Peak Highway around 9 a.m.  (Not so smart if you're intending on doing a long run...once noon rolls around, the odds of a storm at higher elevation ticks up!)  My husband and I set out for a ride and run respectively to Barr Camp, about 5.5 miles away and nearly 2,000 feet down.  It was our very first time doing the route! (Yup, that's right, we're starting a route we've never done before -- that begins around treeline -- relatively late in the morning and we're starting out going the easy way...all downhill!  Saving the considerably more difficult 2,000-foot climb back to our car for the second half, closer to when storms could roll in.) 

The first half of the run went pretty much how you'd expect an entirely downhill run in the mountains to go.  Beautiful views, fairy tale forests and a runner's high because of course life is grand when you're gliding on a decline!  I love exploring new trails, so I was having a blast.

Stephen, being on two wheels, had the advantage on the downhill, and beat me to Barr Camp by a fair margin.  It was sunny and warm when I finally reached the cabin, and we decided to hang out for a little while, chat with hikers, and fuel up before climbing back.  (Tick tock, tick tock)

Heading back, I took the lead because I'm faster on hills than Stephen.  I still wasn't totally acclimated to mountain running back then, so my runner's high faded pretty fast: that glide turned into a sludge up a steeper-than-I-realized trail, getting harder by the minute because I was gaining elevation the entire time.  I wasn't more than a mile or two from Barr Camp when I noticed that the sky was growing dimmer.

I don't remember how soon after that I heard the first rumble of thunder, but I was far enough from my endpoint that I knew I was in trouble.  I still had a lot of distance to cover, and I wasn't exactly blazing through it because it was so steep!  I started praying for the storm to hold off, but the thunder instead boomed closer and closer together.  It wasn't long before lightning followed.

I didn't know what to do.  I hadn't researched what to do if trapped outside when lightning hits (research what you are supposed to do when lightning hits!).  I knew there was something about what trees you are not supposed to stand by, but I couldn't remember the specifics. (According to the NOAA, stay away from tall, isolated trees, and if in a forest stay near shorter trees.)  I kept running, petrified, stopping and crouching momentarily every time I heard thunder.  There was no safe location in sight, I was totally out of my depth and I was running inside my own cautionary "Don't try this behavior!" tale.

With maybe 3/4ths of a mile to go, I reached the point in the trail where it emerged out of the forest and became a barren ridge for the final climb.  Now I had to make a decision: run the final few minutes to safety on an exposed trail at timberline, where lightning is the most dangerous?  Or stay where I was in a slightly safer location, but keeping myself in harm's way longer?

The worse of two bad options!

I stayed in the forest, reasoning that my chances of being struck by lightning were greater on the exposed trail.  The next however many minutes (felt like an eternity; it was at least 30) lightning and thunder continued around me, I was soaked by rain, and beginning to get scared something happened to Stephen because he still hadn't caught up.  The entire time, I kept wondering if I was about to become a terrible news story that my coworkers would somberly cover at the top of the 10 p.m. show.

I was a crying, cowering mess when Stephen came upon me sometime later.  He was so exhausted from climbing that he barely noticed the life-threatening predicament we had been in.  The storm by this point was also finally passing.  He was physically done, so I took his bike and walked it up that final exposed 1,200 meters that had previously stood between me and refuge.

A brutal but effective lesson in why lightning must always be respected!