Rain Rain Come On In

Rain is finally here, I've been waiting for it. The weather has been too good, besides we need it anyway. Couple of weak systems rolled by but are followed by stronger ones. It ain't that cold and frankly I love running in the rain but it does put a damper in the other activities I need to be doing like biking and swimming. Speaking of which I need to start swimming. Debating whether to drop in on a spin class this Saturday. Everything is just harder and more dangerous on the bike when it's raining. It's a joke around here that San Francisco drivers don't know how to drive in the rain, I don't think it's a joke. Then there's the bike, brakes are slower and the smooth skinny tires are slippery in the wet pavement. I don't know, it's still fun to be out despite all that. Play it safe indoors or ride outside anyway? Hmmmm....

Sunday's weather will be the same for the run. Rain? Puddles? Mud? Wind? bring it on. Wet shoes does give me blisters but not on a 6-hour run. It ain't even that cold, a good shell will do. This Sunday I'm leading our first trail run of the year. I mapped out a 4.5 and 9.2 mile course in the Marin Headlands that should be fun and challenging for all. I have a feeling though, that the weather is gonna keep most of the runners home. How it goes I guess. I understand, not everyone likes to run in the rain. Personally I'd like to be out 5-6 hours again so I'm probably going to do the majority of that workout before meeting up with the runners at 9AM.

Well that's what's coming up. Looking back, Wednesday I was quite the Slugg (slow and ugly). We had our first track session Tuesday, the previous week was just an intro course. We had about 50 people and a good number were new to the club. It was an easy workout, 8 x 200's with a 200 jog in between. However the easy track workout was preceded by a bunch of exercises so it ended up being a pretty good night overall. The men were initially separated from the women but once we started our intervals it was all a mess. People everywhere. Until we do our benchmark 2-mile run we won't have our pace groups. Our rival club was out there too, they had a good group going as well and with the addition of the other smaller groups we had one very crowded track. I think it's great we have a rival club, lot's of friendly competition. At one point it seemed like all of us was running at the same time, over a 100 people going round and round. I felt like I was in a start of a race. It went very smoothly though because everyone was working from the same play book; slower runners stayed on the right, no one was blocking the lanes, and people were polite.

It's tradition that the first track session is followed by a social at Kezar Pub. This is where I screwed up. Slow was from a good workout, Ugly was from having too many pints after the workout. Club buys the first round but I over estimated the amount of beer we needed and ended up ordering a little too much. So I stayed late with some of the other kids and drank more than I needed. Calories. Calories. Calories. Closed the evening playing wingman to a friend who wanted to talk to a couple of ladies at the bar. I obliged because I actually knew one of them:) An acquaintance who used to attend my church. We actually had a great conversation, comparing notes on what it's like to be in christian and non-christian social circles.

Well I hope everyone is having a great Friday.