Saturday, August 14, 2010

Swarmed by gnats

The other night, I went running.  At 8:30 pm, it was 88 degrees out. Because the family was still up north, I decided to go 5 miles or so. Running along North Lake Shore, I heard a strange buzzing sound, which presaged an attack by a swarm of small insects.  My first thought was gnats, though, in the air, they seemed white. When they landed in the sweat on my chest, however, they were dark. I definitely couldn't breathe through my mouth, so I used the nose. To get away from them, I had to accelerate to a near sprint, which wasn't so bad, as I'm training for an 800 meters showdown with Drake in October, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do at that hour in that heat, but then they caught up with me, or perhaps another swarm found me, so I had to speed up again.  After 3 reps, when I headed up the hill, I seemed to have shaken them.

All told, it was straight out of Hitchcock's The Birds, save that I'm not as pretty as Tippi Hedren, nor do I have her diction.



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