The coffee made me do it

With all the running challenges in Fairbanks : the extreme cold, the black ice, the wildfire smoke, the short days, there was one really good thing about it all : no rainy runs. Rain in Fairbanks is extremely rare, so when it rains once a month each summer, it's easy to avoid it by taking a rest day, or waiting until it lets up, because it doesn't rain all day long. My last rainy run was when I lived in Oklahoma, in 2007. Needless to say, I've become a pussy to doing anything in the rain.

Here, just two miles from the Pacific Ocean, it rains a LOT. And we're talking heavy, non-stop rain, for days on end. I had found my new running challenge. No longer the ice and cold, but the rain. How much can I take.

I only drink coffee for races and I never get up at 6am to see Matt off to work, but today I did both. By 8am, I was wired and twitching as caffeine careened out of control through my veins. I looked outside. Rain, again.

This time I did it. Downpour or not, I needed to do something other that sit at the computer twitching. The house was clean already. I had to run. I wore my usual outfit and added a raincoat, cinched the hood so that only my face peeked out of the blue vinyl. Running into the wind in a downpour feels like someone throwing buckets of rain at you. My contacts came close to sliding out. Eyelashes worked like windshield wipers to clear the stream of water running into my eyes. Water dripped off the tip of my nose, inhaling it every other breath. Was I running underwater? Soon I was soaked completely through. The years of backpacking through Alder bushes had rendered my raincoat useless. I might as well have been wearing a cotton t-shirt. Miraculously, my feet stayed dry (thanks trail running shoes!).

I returned home with an evil little smile on my face. Running in a downpour returns the same looks from passing motorists as running at 40 Below. And I did it. Just three miles. Can I do more? Stay tuned.