Running in the November Rain

Before I was a runner I would be driving in my 3,000 pound motorized sofa (h/t Mr. Money Mustache) and see someone out jogging and think they were crazy. First of all, why are you running? Is someone chasing you? Also, have you noticed that it’s raining? You can’t take one day off from your running habit?

Today, I became that crazy person.

I’ve been into running for few years now. Something changed during a 6k race that I randomly entered for charity back in 2017. I had tried running on and off throughout my life before that, but it never stuck. I loved that race, though, and was hooked from then on.

But I was a fair weather runner.

I adored crisp fall days, sunny and 65 degrees. Foliage, light breeze. New England running perfection. On those days I couldn’t wait to lace up my shoes and get outside.

When winter came though, bringing cold and wet weather, I would shrink back inside. My running practice since 2017 has been strictly seasonal.

Lately I’ve lamented to myself that I haven’t run much. I started down that path this morning, feeling frustration at the coming winter, looking through the window at a dreary, wet, cold, grey November day.

But then I flipped it. What if today was a great day for a run? It was Friday, and I love running on Friday afternoons after a busy week of work. I didn’t have anything on my calendar.

Yeah it was in the low 40s and it was raining. What of it?

All day I looked forward to the run. I was more excited because of the weather. I was going to prove to myself that the weather had no control over me. I wanted to run and it didn’t need to be more complicated. Lace ’em up.

9 miles later my legs were tired to be sure but I was energized. I reveled in the ridiculousness of bouncing through the cold rainy streets in running shorts, passing sour-looking folks walking their dogs, bundled up like they were headed to the north pole.

The rain egged me on. Big puddles were excuses to build up speed and jump—no, fly—over them. Hands cold? Apparently you’re not running fast enough, Matt.

I capped it off with an ice cold shower.

There is power in doing something that most people, including yourself at first, think is ridiculous or crazy. Owning your own desire to do something, regardless of what anyone else might think about it, is a special accomplishment.

I feel like I’m on my back, and there’s the Sistine Chapel, and I’m painting away. I like it when people say, ‘Gee, that’s a pretty good-looking painting.’ But it’s my painting, and when somebody says, ‘Why don’t you use more red instead of blue?’ Good-bye. It’s my painting.

Warren Buffett, quoted in The Snowball by Alice Schroeder

It is important to do things that are uncomfortable. Comfortable is nice, and it’s good to appreciate it when we get it. But to seek it as the goal, the end, is a mistake. In my experience more good comes from seeking the uncomfortable.

I look forward to a winter of cold, wet, miserably amazing runs.