Running in the rain

So today my friend Carla came over to run.  She hadn't been running too much lately, so we planned to do about 5 miles.  I wanted to get a long run in, so I wanted to set out early and get 5 or 6 miles in and arrive back at my house around the same time she did.  This would give me a total of 10-11 miles.  My timing wasn't too great.  I was about 1.5 miles out from my house when I saw her drive by, so I turned around and booked it home.  I pounded out a 7:35 mile to try to get home so she wasn't waiting too long, but at the same time, I didn't want to overdo it and make it so I would hurt myself in trying to get a little distance in.  Anyway, I got home and we set out for a little over 5 miles at a nice easy pace.

As we left, the clouds were rolling in, but at about the 1.5 mile mark, the rain started coming down.  For whatever reason, I have a hard time starting a run when it's raining, but if I'm already outside, I don't mind it at all.  We were soaked through pretty quickly, but it only rained for about 5 or 10 minutes.  While my shirt and shorts were soaked, my shoes were still pretty good.  That all changed about 20 minutes later when it started raining harder than before.  Within 20 seconds my shoes were soaked through.  That's really the one thing I don't like about running in the rain.  I don't mind being wet myself, but my feet are another story.

I ended up doing 8.3 miles in 1:19:04.  I really had wanted to do more, but it just didn't work out with the timing.  I wasn't about to leave Carla at my house while I went back out and did another 3-4 miles.

Now I'm left in a tough situation.  I had wanted to try to bang out 10+ miles at under 9:00 pace today so that I could have a feeling about how I would perform in the Minneapolis Marathon before I signed up.  Now, having run less mileage at a slower pace (albeit while feeling extremely fresh at the end), I have no idea where I'm at.  I would like to be able to run under 2:00 at the very least, and I'm pretty confident I could do that.  But I also like to at least have a chance at breaking my PR each time I race, and I'm not confident I would be able to.  Oh well, I have until the 28th to sign up before prices get raised again.

If I feel good tomorrow and my little aches and slight calf muscle strain isn't apparent, I might consider running long again on Wednesday or Thursday.  We'll see.

Finally, I'd like to give a shout out to my friend Jeff who is dealing with some Achilles issues at the moment.  I hope it gets better soon and you're able to do Grandma's!  Either way, you should run TC in October (but beware, normally it's filled by this time, so time is running out!).