What I learned running in the rain today

Rain was falling when I woke up just before 6 this morning. At about 11, the clouds parted and the sun was shining, so I headed out for a run. And for the second time in five days, the weather changed dramatically about five minutes into my run. On Saturday it was a downpour; today it was steady rain and rapidly increasing wind gusts.

Though I had planned to do my usual weekday 2-miler, I turned back a little early and ended up running 1.5 miles, which is fine as far as my streak is concerned – the USRSA officially allows a minimum of a mile a day for maintaining a streak – but it was disappointing as far as wanting to build my mileage for the week.

As I ran home, I thought about how I usually say I’m fine with running in the rain, especially when temperatures are as mild as they are today. (Many times, I’ve paraphrased Amby Burfoot’s quote about how the only kind of weather not great for running is 34 degrees and raining, and I’ve run in 34-and-raining dozens of times over the past two years.) This was a steady but not soaking rain, and I realized what was bothering me wasn’t the water falling on me but the fear of what might happen.

That’ so often what slows us down, whether running or doing anything else: the fear of things getting worse. I didn’t mind the rain, and I didn’t mind the wind either, which was sending yellow leaves soaring through the air almost in formation. It was the fear that lightning would develop or that a tree would fall on me. Wind has never scared me until last year, when a summer weather patterns brought twisters to our region.

If I only knew that nothing worse than wind and rain would happen, I’d be fine with this weather, I kept thinking. But that’s always the real problem, isn’t it: not fear of what is happening but fear of what could happen?

And this transpires in other ways too, not just with fear. When I was in my twenties, I did so much writing and tried so hard to get published and it just never worked. I remember once thinking, “If I knew this was necessary practice, laying the groundwork for a future career, I’d be fine with all the rejections. What bothers me is worrying that it’s not going to get any better for me.” Of course, in retrospect, that’s exactly what it was: learning the ropes for a career that took a turn in the following decade, when I started getting plenty of work published, based on the lessons I absorbed during all those rejection years.

Now, as I try to pursue increasingly bigger projects, I often have the same thought: rejection is fine if it’s a steppingstone to learning something and consequently improving, but what if rejection is all I’ll see?

And so, the lesson seems to be to remember how much we hamper ourselves with anxiety about what’s ahead. Is this just a windy day to be out running, or is a twister about to touch down? I’m fine running in a steady rain, but am I about to be struck by lightning? Oh well, you can’t expect every piece of writing to get published the first time you send it out, but what if this rejection means it’s unpublishable?

Once again, the operative concept is mindful living. Just as it’s a mistake to spend too much of the present looking forward to good things yet to come – which I think we tend to do when we’re younger, looking forward to college, or graduation, or working, or being married – it’s just as big a mistake to spend too much of the present worrying about what might happen. I ran and got wet; I did not stumble into a tornado, and no trees fell on me. It was just a wet run in a steady rain. And next time I’ll try to enjoy it a little more.