Running in the Rain

This morning was our first long run. It was 4 miles and I've been amped to do it all week. I had my alarm set for the regular 'get-up-for-work-time' but our adorable, precious, sweet, little kitty cat decided that we needed to get up a little extra early this morning.

That's BJ - isn't he sweet?!

He threw up 5, yep, 5 times before 5:30 this morning. See, my alarm goes off at 5:46, but I don't ever get up that early. I usually am up at 6:30 (extra emphasis on the unwritten not typically) for work. Lately, though, I've actually been getting up and functioning like an adult (I think it's because I'm almost 30) by around 6:30 - 6:45. I had intended on being out to run by like 7:30 this morning, so getting up at 6:45 would have been perfect. But no. Bodge (on of his nicer, but many, nicknames) had a different plan in store. He pukes, wakes us up, David gets up to clean the floor, and I brilliantly decide "why go back to sleep when we were wanting to get up early anyway?" Ugh. It must have been sleep deprivation making me crazy.

So we get up - David cooks breakfast - I make my toast with peanut butter and sample some of the agave nectar that I got in my May #FoodiePenPals package - and we think about leaving. At about 6:30 we start getting ready to go. Before I get dressed, though, I check Twitter. I saw that there was supposed to be a line of severe storms moving through from 7:00 - 9:00. Sometimes weather men get their predictions wrong - and that's what I was hoping for this morning. But nope, they weren't wrong.

We ran the Third Creek Greenway and fortunately for us, there is a set of railroad tracks that crosses a section of the greenway. And where those tracks cross, there is a bridge!!

The bridge is right past the 2.75 mile marker to the East, at the bend.

We started out at the 3.75 mile marker, so we were a mile into our run when the skies just opened up on us. It was pretty heavy rain, actually. The picture below is from www.weather.com and it shows the past 24-hours of precipitation in Knoxville. It's quite a lot and I really feel like those yellow portions were moving through at 7:00 this morning!

Anyway - I was wearing my new running shoes and all the rain invigorated me. It made me feel like I was an actual runner. I didn't quit. I didn't tell David that I thought we should just stay at home and do our run later. I didn't sit on the ground under that bridge and not move. At the first break in the storm we headed out toward the 1.75 mile marker. We did it! We finished 4 miles in under an hour. We were under the bridge for about 8 minutes. The rain really tapered off after the initial onslaught, but David had me laughing and smiling throughout most of the run. 

He was struggling to stay at my pace so I told him to run ahead of me, but he kept trying to talk to me, too. I finally told him to turn around and run backwards so I could hear him. Which he did. The show-off! He didn't do it for very long, but it gave me something to be entertained by and he helped me finish strong. Once I caught my breath I realized that there is no better feeling than succeeding at something you set your mind to.

I've got two more shots for you. One of them is a screen shot of the activity record from my fitbit and the other is a photo of me post-run before we headed into the grocery store! 

Here's the fitbit shot. I started recording this activity after we had already been running and finished it after we finished our cool down. You can also see the time where we were under the bridge and not moving. I love my fitbit! If you have one and want to be friends, look me up: rebeccalcorn!

Have I mentioned before that I'm a really slow runner? Some of that is walking, though!

Also - here is the shot of me going into the grocery store. I know I look a hot mess, and you can't tell at all that I am wet, but I am. My shoes were still kicking up water when we left the store...

I also want to give a real quick shout out to my very dear friend Kara Kasch who will be running the New Jersey Marathon Half tomorrow! She's gonna rock it out and I'm going to be cheering for her from Tennessee!

Tell me - do you like to run in the rain?