Thank you, rain!

Being able to tolerate the rain is definitely a useful life-skill for living in the Pacific Northwest. It's not that we get so much rain in absolute terms; most major East Coast cities get more inches of precipitation per year. It's the eight months of gray misty drizzle that you have to get used to.

Tolerating the rain is one thing. Being thankful for it is altogether different.

And yet, here I am, thankful for the rain.

Fall Saturdays are quite busy in my household, with lots of soccer games for my kids. Saturday races are therefore anything but guaranteed for me, which is too bad, seeing as how fall is the prime running season. There's a Halloween-themed race that I've run every year since it began three years ago, but it looked like this year I wasn't going to be able to make it because of my kids' soccer conflicts. Boo! The race organizers very generously told me if I couldn't make it, I could run the 5K virtually, and they'd get me the race bib and medal later (most likely at the next event). Of course, it wouldn't be quite the same because race day atmosphere is so important.

And then it turned out that the recent downpouring of rain we'd gotten here had left all of the local park fields waterlogged, so the parks and rec department cancelled all soccer games this weekend.

As the dad to soccer-playing kids, I must expressed sadness at this turn of events.

As a race-loving runner, all I can say is, "Woo hoo, thank you, rainfall!!!"

Rain, rain, make up your mind!

Today was one of those annoying days when the local weather just couldn't make up its mind about what it wanted to do. The weather.com forecast called for rain starting around noon, so I figured I should've been able to get my long run (~90-100 minutes) in even though I couldn't start until 10 a.m. due to volunteering in my kid's elementary school class.

Within ten minutes, it was misting. Well, a little mist was nothing to worry about. Practically two-thirds of the year here in the Pacific Northwest is misty. Besides, while some of the sky looked ominously dark, other parts still had blue patches poking through the clouds. I did fish out my ziplock bag and stuck my smartphone inside, just in case.

Instead of abating, however, the rain came down more steadily. I've run races in the rain, but I don't necessarily find anything exhilarating about it, especially when there are alternatives. So I headed home and finished that outside run at 3.57 miles. I grabbed my car keys and my Kindle Fire and drove over to the gym.

This would work out all right, I decided. Each episode of "The Wire" runs about an hour, which would be enough time to run 7 miles at a pretty easy pace, and get me over 10 miles for the day. (I've been making my long runs more like 12+ mile recently, but a little shorter of one wouldn't kill me.)

Okay, so at the gym there are three treadmills (out of seven) that work well for watching on my Kindle Fire; the others end up having the screen at an uncomfortably low angle. One of the three is currently out-of-order. One of the remaining two was being used. I got on the other one. Now, this is the newest treadmill in the gym, and it is the only one that can decline (in addition to incline). That's a neat feature, but it also makes it considerably louder than the other treadmills. I mean, I'm not a heel striker, and normally on the treadmill, I'm not terribly loud. But on this one, it was CLONG CLONG CLONG CLONG - 180 times per minute! I'm not sure but I think I drove away the older woman who was walking on the treadmill next to me....

Anyway, after 30 minutes and 3.5 miles, it seemed like it was clearing up outside. I paused "The Wire" and got ready to leave the gym and finish the last 3 miles of the day outside.

Which of course is when it started to run again.

Argh!

Well, I did get to finish that episode, and to try the decline setting, as I ran the last 3 miles at -2%. CLONG CLONG CLONG CLONG....

Making the most of opportunities

There were plenty of running races in town this weekend, including a big half marathon. I'd strongly considered running the 10K race that was part of the half marathon, but Mr. Mom duties kept me from doing so. In the early afternoon, it alternately poured rain or streamed sunshine through the clouds. Then it was time to go to the airport to pick my wife up, and when we got home, I had a small window of time to go running before dinner. Yea!

The gym that I belong to has a lot of good things, but the hours of operation are not one of those. Sunday hours are noon to 6 p.m. Still, I knew I could get in a 3-4 mile run before closing. Five miles would've been ideal, since I could watch an entire episode of "Justified" in that distance, but my window wasn't that long.

On the other hand, the skies looked like they were clearing. Sort of. Running outside would also save me about 10 minutes of round-trip transit time (driving up the hill to the gym, parking, walking in, and the reverse).

Outside it was. Because of the clouds or maybe because my smartphone is getting old, it took a while to get a GPS lock for RunKeeper. (Yes, sometimes I feel like a dork standing outside, dressed in running clothes, holding my smartphone up to the sky in a vain attempt to speed up the GPS satellitel acquisition....)

For entertainment, I was listening to the audiobook of Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star, which is the first giant book in a space opera series. (I've read the entire series but that was a while ago, and listening is a different experience.)

I started with a comfortable but fast pace, basically between 7:30 to 8:00 depending on the slope of the hills. (I live in a hilly part of town, so unless I run on the track, it's impossible to have a flat run; hence, even pacing is also near impossible, and instead, it's more of even effort.) The early part of the out-and-back route was what I'd call rolling hills. At the 1.15 mile mark, I began the sharpest downslope, a drop of almost 200 feet in altitude over about 2/3 of a mile.

You want to know what running downhill does for your speed? That 2/3 of a mile was entirely sub-7:00, with parts registering (per RunKeeper) as fast as sub-6:20, which is faster than my current 5K pace, but it wasn't more than a 3 on a 1-5 effort scale.

Of course, just before 2 miles, the bill came due for that downhill section, as I had to head back up the same hill. Apart from one tough segment where I slowed to a near 9:00 pace, I managed to keep my pace under 8:00 even while ascending.

The mile splits ended looking like this:

mile 1: 7:38 with -33 feet climb

mile 2: 7:01 with -133 feet climb

mile 3: 7:43 with 157 feet climb

I got home and figured I had maybe 10 more minutes of workout time (factoring in showering time, etc.) before dinner, and I considered tacking on an easy mile or so. But laziness won out, and I headed inside.

I had just enough time to take off my running shoes and get a big glass of ice water before it started to pour outside. Not the usual kind of misty drizzle we get in the Pacific Northwest eight months of the year, but really hard stuff that's usually accompanied by crashing thunder and dazzling lightning. Whew!

Note to self: next time, no how matter how short of a planned run, if it looks at all like there might be rain, bring a ziplock bag to protect smartphone, just in case.