Rain and Running; what's not to love?

As I wrote in my last post I’m finally entered for the Bristol Half Marathon.  Now EVERYONE who I have spoken to, and a few people on this beautiful site have told me that if you can run 10 miles you’ll be fine on the day.  I personally love a ‘do it on the night’ sort of attitude, but we’re not talking about a little trot around Hanham here are we?

On Thursday I looked at my training plan and saw it wanted 10 miles from me.  I was looking forward to the challenge and thought that it would be achievable.  I wasn’t however betting on the gallons of water that would come tearing from the sky at around 9:45 on Thursday morning.

I consider myself a hard-core sort of person, I’ve waited for a parking space in the Galleries at Christmas for over an hour before so, I could deal with a little bit of rain.  As the rain turned from drizzle to rain to a torrential downpour I realised that I might be alone on the cycle-track for this run.  

I was.

There was one other woman running, in this downpour and I tried to convay a look of don’t-worry-I-feel-your-pain-too-it-might-stop-in-a-minute-bloody-British-Summer, but it turns out that’s quite hard to commnuicate that particular message through the use of eyebrows alone.  

I didn’t stop, I completed the distance.  But I did have to turn around when I reached Staple Hill and the water was pouring down from one of the bridges and flooding the path and I didn’t fancy any real world practice of the Aqua Jogging Phil wrote about, I like my Nikes too much to submerge them totally in water (although they’re actually still drying out from yesterday).  

Running in the rain is a great experiece, it makes you think that you’re in a movie, or even better… a music video!  After finishing my run, I was soaked, my iPod had broken and I was very cold, but I had finally completed that magical 10 mile distance, so yeah, I’m still hardcore.