It rained here last night.  No, it really rained. Poured.

And standing at the window at five thirty in the afternoon watching the torrenting buckets of water fall from the sky, knowing I was due at a hill-training meetup a few blocks away, some little voice in my head ever-so-quietly assured me that it would let up.

I dressed to run.  I navigated my car in severely-reduced-visibility conditions through a puddle obstacle course, wipers going full speed.  I dashed from my car to the Running Room store in a futile effort to avoid a few dozen meters of soaking.  And the six of us stood there looking at hints of blue sky in the west hoping it would let up.

It let up.  It let up for precisely long enough for us alay our fears, to set out and to reach that what-the-hell point-of-no-return.

We ran only four klicks and a third of our hills, stopping because the lightning strikes were creeping a little close — one-mississippi, two-mississippi boom! — for comfort. Stopping because our shoes were more water than foam rubber.  Stopping because even the cars were giving up.  Stopping because the sidewalk resembled more a stream than a safe concrete path. 

But we lasted near half an hour in that weather. And drenched to the bones, standing back under the overhang at the store, the manager snapping our group shot with her iPhone, it was funny but we couldn’t quite recall why we’d given up so soon.