Tuesday, 4 June 2013

Floodpocalypse!

Good evening. As it's TT Week I feel like I should have had the scoreboard painted by a scout, but here it is anyway in its usual digital glory:

Distance (miles)
Time (hh:mm)
Energy (kcals)
Since last post (28 May 2013)
12.0
5:41
1392
Since records began (27 Dec 2012)
484.8
142:05
76852

You may have seen in the news that it's been a bit damp in Prague this week. As dedicated as I am to my training I draw the line at walking through torrential rain and wading through flood water, so my totals are pretty meagre. Let's call it 'tapering' :)

River flow rate near Prague in the last few days (source here)
[Hint: above red line is bad; above purple line is very very bad]

River water level near Prague in the last few days (source here)

The first I knew about it was on Sunday afternoon when I was notified that our office's emergency plan had been activated. We're close to the river, and the basement and lower ground levels of our building were flooded during the catastrophic floods of 2002. My team sits on the upper ground level, so rather than taking any chances I spent Sunday afternoon shifting the important stuff to a storage area on the fourth floor. Fortunately the water didn't reach 2002 levels and is now dropping again, although it'll be a while before the full extent of the damage is apparent. Prague seems to have got off fairly lightly; other towns, such as Passau in Germany, have been much more severely affected.

The rain abated yesterday evening, so I spent a couple of hours after work walking along the river from our office to see what I could see. As is evident from the first photo, quite a few others had the same idea.

Roads closed to traffic, flood barriers erected by the river near Charles Bridge

Fancy a beer? Submerged parasols at a 'riverside' cafe

Flood barrier just about protecting the tow path at one of the many inundated locks on the river
(when I checked again this morning the water was spilling over the top of this barrier)

The weather looks like being a bit unsettled well into next week, but I should be able to get out often enough to keep myself in condition. At this late stage I'm not planning any further long training walks.

Thanks for reading and have a good TT Week! It looks like yoú've got decent weather for it!

4 comments:

  1. Wow! Not often we can sit in smugness, especially at this time of year. In the TT bubble, I had totally missed that story. You'll not add any great fitness at this stage anyway but try and stay flexible.

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    1. I only hope that we get as lucky with the weather on 22-23 June. At the risk of jinxing it the long-range forecast doesn't look too bad...

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  2. Swimming? To help fitness?

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    Replies
    1. The rather alarming warnings we received about what to do if you come into contact with floodwater suggest that incredible hulk-style mutation could be an issue with that :)

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