Running in the Rain

The difficulty with an all-season boot camp work out is that sometimes you will encounter inclement weather.  This morning it began raining almost as soon as we pulled into the parking lot at the beach.  We agreed however, that unless it began to thunder and lightning we would continue.  Fridays are hill running days so we proceeded to the steepest street in the beach to run the hill for 20 minutes.  I was wet and the road was slippery with oil slick but my shoes griped tight.  Pretty soon my wet clothing was chafing here and there and the humidity, rather than being dispersed by the rain, only became worse.  It felt like running through a wall of warm jelly.  I made it up the hill four times despite all the discomfort.  My record on a perfect day is six so I thought it was pretty god, all things considered.  Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, the song on my IPod as I made it up the hill for the last time was Chicago's "Feeling Stronger Every Day" from which the webtag for this blog was derived. 

It was one of the toughest days on which to work out; the humidity made my glasses fog and I couldn't see, there were mosquitoes galore back down at the beach where we returned to do our strength training, and the rain had made all surfaces slippery.  The pull-up bar almost slid out of my hands, and the bench was almost to wet to hold on to while doing dips but I managed two sets.  Kneeling in the wet sand to stretch out my quads and hamstrings left huge patches of sand clinging to me that took much brushing to get rid off.

In spite of everything it was one of the best work outs I've had in a while.  But I say that every day.  The only reason I can find for this is like the song says....'Stronger every day....'