Well into the winter I’m finally OK with the rain. I resisted for weeks. I’d sit inside working, working, working and when I noticed the room had brightened a little – the clouds had parted, or at least thinned – I’d check the radar and if the splotches of green and yellow had vaporized into light blue or gray, I’d rush to get dressed, loosened up and out the door before the next batch of moisture came in. Sometimes there would be no choice but to run in the rain and I’d do it but I hated it, hated it so much that I would ill-prepare. Man did my nipples hurt after that one wet ten-miler. And the chafing down below! Gradually, though, I acclimated, without really knowing it until my run one recent Sunday just as dusk began to slowly pull the shades on the day. It wasn’t raining as I prepared to get out and for the first easy mile it remained dry. The temperature was in the low to mid 40s, with no wind. After a day off that had followed 20 consecutive days of running, my legs felt fresh for the first time in weeks. Just meandering on the roads in the neighborhood, I felt a surge of happiness and gratitude. What perfect conditions these were for running! There was no real plan for the run, beyond running for an hour or so, but the surge of happiness and gratitude translated directly into a surge of adrenaline, and there I was, picking up the pace. I knew then what was going to happen: I was going to run progressively faster. I was going to run eight miles, working my way down from my first mile of 8:20 to something around 6:30 pace. No picture exists of Kenyes in shorts and sneakers, so far as I know, but this quote convinces me he was a runner: “Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits – a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.” As the animal spirits coursed through me, a few fat drops began to fall – something apart from typical Portland rain, which is most often drizzle. The south wind picked up. I was cruising now in the mid-sevens per mile, feeling great. The rain pelted down. Not only did it not matter, it only made things better. Cars crackled along the wet streets, their headlights shining, glaring. As much rain as we get here, you’d think the drainage would be better, but there were puddles already, and I didn’t change my course at all to avoid them. Splash, splash, splash! I remembered running the Napa Valley Marathon one year in a start-to-finish pouring wind-swept rain and getting so cold I shivered for hours afterward, but that was in my soft California days. Now, I saluted my hard-earned hardy Oregon nature, finally in winter form, and powered on.
– Pete Danko