For Whom the Wind Blows

Out in Twitterland, tryingtoqualify displays a Portlander's nonchalance toward the chance of showers on Race Morning, but a measure of fear is noted in her followup: "wind?" Yep, wind can make all the difference. Here’s what I wrote after the March 2006 Napa Valley Marathon, my slowest marathon, the only marathon I've run, in fact, in which I did not improve my time:

I'd guess about a third of an inch of rain fell on me during the 3 hours, 52 minutes and 30 or so seconds I was running the Napa Valley Marathon this morning. Not that bad, you're thinking. Third of an inch. Hardly Katrina. And yet, heading into a steady wind of 5-15 mph, with gusts over 20, it didn't take long to become wet through the nylon jacket and the cycling jersey that was under it. Wet through the skin, too. Wet to the bone, as they say.

Wet, windy—with the temperatures in the 40s, well, yeah, it was cold. Pretty miserable, really.

So, what about the wind? It’s really too early to say anything very meaningful about the wind potential. So much depends upon the details of how the Big Pattern Shift of Early December 2009 unfolds. But right now, the graphical forecast has Sunday-morning winds at 7 mph from the south/southeast. Later in the day, as the weather system is presumed to move into Northern California, the winds pick up to 10 mph and begin to blow from the west/southwest. The course heads toward the west/southwest. South winds under 10 mph, bothersome at points but not horrible; west/southwest winds at 10+mph? Nightmarish, especially if they carry rain.