Runnin' In The Rain

When I left the house yesterday morning, I had no idea what I was in for.  As I was leaving the neighborhood, I noticed a few drops of water on the windshield, but thought I'd driven past some overspraying sprinklers.  The further south I got, the more drops were on the windshield, and by the time I reached the RunOn! parking lot there was no denying that it was definitely raining.  A quick glance at the radar on my phone confirmed that there was even more on the way.

Despite the rain, the group was still gathering, so I got out of the car and started getting ready.  But after a couple of lightning flashes, the overall group leaders decided to call off the run.  However, my pace group had different ideas.  We all decided that we were already up obscenely early, dressed to run, and we had the group for motivation - we were going to go for it.  I was apprehensive about it, but figured "what the hell," and fell in with the group.

Let's just say it was a very soggy 8 miles.  I had actually managed to keep my feet relatively dry until I accidentally slogged through a major puddle at around 5.5 miles.  Near the end of the trail, we had all reached the point where we could wring out our clothes and all our shoes together were performing a "squishy symphony."  We just had to laugh, and keep going.

So this was another first for me - normally if it's raining I either postpone the run or hit the treadmill.  I can't say that I enjoyed the "being dripping wet" part, but the cooling effect of the rain was pretty nice, and I made it through relatively unscathed (one tiny blister on my left foot and some chaffing from my water belt).  It's not something I'd want to do all the time, or for any kind of long run, but I won't "run away" from running in the rain anymore!

We survived the rain - no melting here!

Saturday's Stats:

• 8.1 miles; 1:51:36; 13:47 min/mi avg pace