Rain Delay

Our 14 mile run yesterday morning was again put on hold thanks to a driving rain.   I knew that a storm was in the forecast, but I staunchly refused to accept it.  We prepped Friday night, hydrating well and eating an entire loaf of French bread.  I thought we could sneak in our run before the heavens opened and laugh in the face of Mother Nature.

When we woke up, it was still dry outside.  We thought we could get away with it, but thirty minutes later the rain started falling so we dejectedly postponed the run till the next morning.  Though I was glad we didn't get stuck in the downpour, part of me wondered if we made the right decision.

We ran errands, ate veggie sushi, and futzed around.  Blue skies slowly poked through around noon, and though the forecast still said more rain was coming, we wondered if we could squeeze our run in after all.  We digested, hydrated, looked out the window, then at the last possible moment said, "We're going for it."

We were running against potential rain and the impending sunset.  The conditions were tough.  The second half of the run was due west, right into the low sunset, the beam of which my visor couldn't shield.  It was brutally cold and the wind was the nastiest I've ever fought against.  The wind pushed so hard against me the last mile, I was practically running in place.  To top it off, seagulls were dropping clams overhead, cracking the shells on impact to get to the meat inside.  We were dodging little seafood bombs while running into a wall of wind.

I'm not sure if it was despite the harsh weather and odd hour or because of it, but we finished in record time.  We bested our pace from the half marathon in January, and it's been our fastest and longest run without stopping to date.  Maybe I should hope for rain delays more often.