The first time that I checked, it showed Friday August 31, 2012 as being partly cloudy, lot's of sunshine and only a 20% chain of rain. Super cool fact...it's a FULL MOON both Friday and Saturday nights. For those of you who are night runners, I'm certain you can appreciate running under a FULL MOON, especially in the Alps. By the way, why don't we say "Alps" in the USA? I much prefer it over Mountains. Two syllables versus one, it would seem more efficient and it just sounds cool....kind of like "tits". Pretty easy to get distracted when your thinking about tits, but ok, back to the weather.The second time that I checked the weather no change for Friday. When I next checked the forecast it called for rain and thunderstorms on Friday and rain on Saturday, an 80% chance on both days. This makes me wonder, how do they actually come up with a "% chance"? I can only picture in my mind's eye a couple of weather forecasters in tie dyed shirts, smoking a bong, playing with a weegie board to determine our fate in Mont Blanc. Thinking about running in the rain for 103+ miles in chilly weather makes a very difficult race, just that much harder. How much is "that"? It's a lot! It requires a little more planning to keep your feet, hands and head dry and warm.
Interestingly enough, there are mandatory gear requirements for this race. They include some of the following:
1. Survival blanket 1.4M x 2M minimum
2. Jacket with hood and made with waterproof (recommendation: minimum 10,000 Schmerber) and breathable (recommendation: RET more than 13) membrane (Gore-Tex or similar) which will with stand the bad weather in the mountains.
3. Additional warm mid layer top: (cotton is excluded) minimum weight 180g
This is by no means the entire list, but just a few of the items to address the potential weather issues that we may encounter. In previous years races they've had to delay and even cancel the event due to sever weather. It's so like the socialist culture of the french to require these minimums though. When I see these type of requirements it makes me think of government oversight and control. For all of you uneducated jack asses out there, this means big government, this means control, this mean democrat, which means higher taxes, less take home pay, because they know how to spend/invest your money better than you do. Sooooo get your ass out to vote in the next election....for ANYONE BUT, obama. Ok, I feel better now.
It's now Saturday morning and the weather like it tends to due, changed. Now they are calling for a 60% chance of rain on Friday that will continue through the night, what a waste of a FULL MOON. It's then suppose to clear and be mostly cloudy on Saturday with only a 20% chain of rain. Sunday, the day that we all hope to finish, is suppose to be beautiful with a 0% chance of rain. So it's looking like we have a rainy, cold start but the weather will improve. I'll take that over a warm start and then have it deteriorate over the course of the race, or is it the race course? In any event, probably should not have said that as it is now certain to do just that! The obligatory gear, will most likely come in handy if we have the forecasted weather. I searched high and low for the "minimum 10,000 Schmerber" rain jacket. On my hunt for this gear at REI in Denver, the store personnel looked at me like I was crazy...."yes, you can help me...I'm looking for some rain gear, with a hood, that has at least 10,000 Schmerber". Keep in mind I'm at the Denver Flagship REI store. This is where every outdoor enthusiast would love to work. The people that work there are anything but normal, so I thought for certain that I was speaking their language when I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about..."you know the 10,000 Schmerber standard, a common standard used world wide for measuring the waterproofness of a jacket". His response to me was, "not in my world have I heard such a standard". By the time I was done at REI he had gathered every outdoor geek working in the department to see if they had heard of this standard. They were all intrigued. they asked me to spell it. Then, one of the guys googled it. Sure enough there was a Schmerber test/standard. Come to find out that "Schmerber" is a unit of measure for the impermeability of a fabric. It was pretty funny to see them all get excited about this. Today they had learned something new. Something that they could impress their friends with the next time that they were smoking a joint or climbing a mountain. All of this did me no good whatsoever because not one jacket had anything to signify how many Schmerbers it was. I ended up just buying a cool looking blue North Face jacket with a hood that I knew I could wear in the future. Hopefully the Chamonix Schmerber police will be on holiday when I get there.
Well I just checked the weather again and no change. So how is the weather in Brentwood. It's going to be a beautiful day. In Miami however they have Hurricane Isaac coming to town on Monday morning. That would be the Monday morning that I was suppose to be arriving there for business meetings. The hangover effects of the storm was to linger through Tuesday, shutting down all of the airports and wreaking havoc on the entire airline industry. As a result, my meetings were cancelled and instead of flying out of Miami on American Airlines, I switched to United Airlines form Nashville to Washington DC. Yes, I did check the weather in both cities on my departure date and it's suppose to be nice. I also chose a connecting flight with a 5 hour layover just to make certain that if we did get delayed due to the weather I'd have plenty of wiggle room to make my connecting flight to Geneva.
The weather. It's such a versatile topic. The most often use of weather is when you have absolutely nothing to say in a conversation so you bring up "the weather". So the next time that you find yourself doing this, save some time and energy and say nothing and just stare at the person. Treat it like a game, it's fun. They may think that you are a little weird, but who cares what they think. If you did then you would actually be having a conversation about everything else, but the weather.
Cheers!
CHAMONIX, MONT BLANC FRANCE
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