Monday, September 07, 2009

Rain and a Big Lizard

Sunday morning it was raining like crazy and because of the thunder and lightning Andrea was not too thrilled with the idea of Jakeb and me going to MacRitchie Reservoir for our 9 mile run.

MacRitchie has a trail system around the lake and it is one of our favorite places in Singapore to run. Part of the trail is on a section called treetops walk where the parks department has built bridge walkways in the tops of the trees around the park. Jakeb and I have never been on this section of trail and with the lightning it would not be the greatest place to be.

When we set off from the parking lot the rain had slacked off and the thunder and lightning were gone. Most of the first part of our run was uneventful. When we got to the trailhead of the treetop walk it was barely sprinkling. So we took off up a hill that was steep enough to have to walk. When we got to the entrance of the treetop walk the gate was closed. It did not open until 9:00 am and we were about an hour early.

As we descended the hill back to the trail head it started to rain pretty hard again. We started running when we got back to the trail. We ran past a golf course and back onto single track trails. There is one section of the trail that has a pretty sharp ascent and then after you top the hill a pretty good descent. The water was running in the middle of the trail like a river and Jake and I were having fun splashing along as we went. The trail was a little bit crowded in this section and on the way down Jakeb splashed through and big pool and totally drenched a lady as he passed her. It was raining so I hope she expected to get wet.

The trail we were running was only seven miles and I wanted to get in nine so we decide to run a couple of miles out and back on the trails we had just run. We got to the MacRitchie dam and right in the middle was a lizard. This big lizard was about three feet long and was totally blocking the path. Are you kidding me? This would never have happened in Texas. We walked behind the lizard for the length of the dam and finally had to run past it because it would not get out of the way.

It continued to rain even after we finished our run. Our legs were covered in mud. I love running in the rain and having another adventure in Singapore.