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This is one unexpected rainy afternoon. Me and my running buddy- Olive, went to ULTRA for our usual after shift run. The skies were dark already but we thought it’s just because it’s already past 4pm. We did our warm up and got started with our walk-run-slow pace when the cool wind started to blew. We look at each other and we have the same thought in our mind-looks like it’s going to rain. We smiled and thought, “The heck! Let’s just keep running and experience it. It’s been a while since we bathe in the rain anyway”. We we’re laughing at our craziness, and the rain poured harder as if it wanted to envelope us with such joy and thrill we are experiencing that time. We ran faster as if we’re racing with the raindrops, laughing at the same time, when the guard whistled at us and told us to stop and take shelter. We did as we saw other runners already stopped. We've talked about how we could prevent getting sick (like taking Bioflu right away, doubling our in-take of vitamin C for the next days and drinking lots of water, and taking a lukewarm bath when we get home) since we wouldn’t want to miss work and have people talking. When the rain stopped, we did our cool down stretch, headed to the den, changed our clothes and got ready to go home.
My ultimate high from running in the rain is when you run with your friends. It brings back lot of happy memories from my childhood…when we used to wait for the rain to pour harder, find which neighbor has a great gutter to shower from, form mud city, do paper boat race at our handmade canals and sling mud at each other . When I run alone, I get to think more. I get to admire the green-ness of the surrounding. Everything felt so alive around me. I am amazed how God takes care of us by sending rain to make sure that we will have ample supply of water so we’ll not be thirsty, so the land will not be that dry to produce food for us and how even an abandoned plant is really not that abandoned because God still looks after its welfare. When I’m on my pace already and have covered some distance, I feel light and not that tired as I normally do, and when you start to feel your sweat and the raindrops dripping from your skin at the same time, its unexplainable exhilarating… It just feels great!
By any chance I miss the opportunity to do this on one rainy afternoon…oh well, I always tell myself there’s always the next rainy day.
