Glad to have survived today's run. Sam, Jan and I started at Cucina on 2nd Ave at 6am, with the plan to run the loop on the Bonneville Shoreline trail from City Creek to Dry Creek and back down to Cucina. Jan turned back a few minutes into the run because of a nagging achilles problem. Sam and I continued on toward City Creek. Now, the last couple of runs Sam and I have done together included getting hung up behind some skunks in Millcreek Canyon and then getting caught in a September blizzard up on Shoreline. Today, it started fine, we had a nice ascent up City Creek, through the meadow, and up past the turn off to Terrace Hills, following the ridgeline trail. There was some lightning in the distance, but we didn't think much of it. That is, until we were suddenly blinded by a tremendous flash of lightning right in front of us, accompanied by a huge crack of thunder. We both hit the ground immediately. Sam swears the bolt was less than 50 feet from us. I have never seen a flash of light so bright that wasn't plugged in to something. It was just freaky--we were way too close to getting fried! Since we had about 4 miles of ridge running ahead of us, we decided, without any discussion, to turn around and head back. On our way down toward Terrace Hills, we had another jolt just a bit behind us; again we both hit the ground. After a few minutes of running for our lives, we got to the relative safety of the Terrace Hills road and ran back down to 11th Ave., Virginia, and to Cucina from there. Crazy morning! | 