A Wall of Water

Imagine you are standing underneath the cold waters of Niagara Falls. The water hits your hat, rolls down its brim, and creates a mini waterfall in front of your face. Your entire body is wet. Your fingers begin to wrinkle from the saturation of water in your skin, and you begin to notice the oddest sensation of, what feels like a small soft pea, rolling down the inside of your pant leg.  Your feet are sitting in water and as you move, so does this water, hitting the sides of your shoe like a pinball bouncing from side to side. On the inside, you are not cold. There  is a radiating warmness that only makes it to the inner layers of skin, leaving the outer layers feeling like someone has both rubbed you with chalk and pricked you with pins.

Now you have some idea about what my Wednesday night run was like.

Of course, I speak in hyperbole. The rain wasn't falling at 56 km/hour, like Niagara Falls, but holy moly, it was wet!

The latest round of the  "Pineapple Express"  visited the Lower Mainland, kindly bringing us tropical rain from the Hawaiian Islands, but forgetting to bless us with summer temperatures and palm trees.

Normally, I run well in the rain. But this rain was more like a wall of water. At 2 km, I was considering turning back.  At 4km, I considered turning right to take a shorter  way back, At 6 km, I considered standing under a strangers carport and at 7km I considered flagging down a cab and going home. But I didn't. I kept going.

Each time I considered these changes to my run, I had to remind myself why I was doing this. I am not just doing this training for me. I committed to raise money for the BC Lung Association. Running in the pouring rain is a challenge. It is not hard. Hard is fighting to breathe. Hard is getting yourself to Chemotherapy  when you know it is going to make you so sick, that you can't get out of bed. Hard is feeling weak, but acting strong.

Thank you for inspiring me to be strong.

Here are my stats for the week;

Sunday LSD; 21.56km.
Tuesday Tempo: 7.11 km  (5:53 min/km)
Wednesday (atmospheric river) Tempo: 10.16 km( 6:10 min/km)
Friday Steady: 6.49 km (6.24 min/km)

Total kilometers: 45.3


Here is my fundraising page again:

fundraising page