It was very humid and overcast today as several of the Buckeye Striders met at 7:00 Saturday morning to do our long mileage on the Olentangy Trail. For three of us, this is our last long day before the Air Force Half Marathon in two weeks. (Everyone else is training for Columbus, already.) That meant we were doing 10 miles while everyone else was doing 8.

Though I was a little bit worried about rain, I was more concerned the sun would come out and it would be even more steamy. (It rained early and there were lots of puddles.)

We were at a pretty slow pace — about a 15-min mile. None of us who are doing Air Force have been training as well as we should, so a slow pace in the humidity made sense.

There were a ton of marathon training groups on the trail! The vast majority of the athletes in these groups are polite and friendly. I get excited seeing so many people out there in the early morning being active! I love marathon training season.

Deb sat in her car to take this picture of me in the pouring rain. (I didn’t want my iPod to get wet.)

At around 7 miles, Deb started singing to help her keep pace. She started with She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain and progressed to It’s Hip to be Square.

Then at about 8 miles the skies opened up and it began to pour! It came on suddenly and within seconds we were soaked! We tried to stay to the side of the trail where the trees blocked the rain a little, but it ended up not making much difference. My new pair of Altras were soggy pretty fast and my feet were sloshing. I hate wet socks! The funny thing is, it was so warm and humid, the rain was warm and not at all refreshing.

It was at about this time that Deb and Elaine started to belt out Singing in the Rain. You gotta love them!

I did try to get them to pick up the pace to get out of the rain faster, but because they both did a half marathon (for training) last weekend, they just couldn’t.

We got back to our cars looking like drowned rats. Unfortunately, two of us did not have towels in our cars — I was one! My car seats were soaked!

Friday, my thought was that I would not do the miles if it was raining. (One of my Facebook fans convinced me that was a bad idea.) But it wasn’t bad! I forgot how much fun it can be to walk in the rain in the summer.

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