Rain?! Rain? Rain!

I had a glorious time, running in the 33 degree rain today. Over the melting ice.


There. I said it. I'm not afraid to admit it!

Now forget you saw me write that.

My absolute least favorite weather in the world is cold rain. Add my second-least favorite weather phenomenon-ice-and it should have been a trail of tears today during the group run.

"at least it's not really raining", I thought as I waddled out the door in my semi-homeless layered get-up.

By the time I got to Grand Army, it was.

And people were filming. People, don't film others in spandex pants, no matter what the human interest aspect is: it's not sporting.

Though Tour Guide and my rear end might be temporarily famous on the local news station.

We decided to run over the Brooklyn Bridge.

"Why don't we go over Williamsburg, too?" asked Oklahoma.

What a great idea! You see, like eating fast food French fries or going on a blind date, it had been long enough that I forgot how painful that particular activity is.

So it was settled. Brooklyn Bridge to the Williamsburg Bridge and back.

Off we went.

I ran with Oklahoma the whole time. He's actually been doing speed work, so he told me about that. As always, he was averaging about one stride to my three.

I wish I had long legs! And a stride that didn't make it see as if I were power walking.

The first time I actually felt a burn was on the Brooklyn Bridge, which I was happy about. Having had that demoralizing treadmill workout, and not having pushed myself at all, I had been worried that I wouldn't e able to keep even a moderate pace.

Speedy we were not but the pace was respectable.

After the first bridge, Oklahoma and I really were on our own, everyone else having either turned around or running at their own pace.

This is the part that was really fun!

Cue the rain starting to drive into our faces.

Cue the silly jokes.

Cue the smiles.

Cut the smiles over the Williamsburg: nothing can make me smile when running that hill-not even a goofy tall man.

Cue the burn: I think that, if I lived nearer to this bridge, I'd do one workout a week that consisted in 3 or 4 out and backs over it. Then I would have buns of iron, if not steel.

We picked it up a bit going down Bedford. The rain was getting harder and it's not quite as much fun to run in the 'non-bike lane' when it is semi covered in rain-wet, melting ice.

But we ran all the way back to Eastern Parkway together.

"thank goodness you were here today!"

I agreed.

About 12 miles on a day when I might not have gotten out of the house. Yay group runs!

Though PPTC has to amp it up: on the Williamsburg Bridge, we saw about 12 or 15 North Brooklyn runners coming at us. There were a total of 5 PPTC'ers on our run. We would have lost the rumble, for sure.

Luckily, we just ran by them.