I quite enjoy running in the rain. Especially in summer

There are some people out there that will look for any ol' excuse to not exercise. One of the main ones that I hear from my more lazy friends is something like "I was going to go for a run today but it was raining." I have heard someone use this same excuse for not going for a swim. The swim excuse was particularly shameful because what was he afraid of, did he think he might get wet?

The other day right before I laced up my boots to head out for a run it started to rain. Rather than call it off though, I waited a bit for the level of rain to die down a bit, and then I took my chances, wrapped my phone in a Ziploc bag, and headed out. It ended up being one of the best runs of the summer.

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I dont' mean that I like running in a torrential downpour, I don't like that at all. I don't mind that if I have already started, but getting started in a downpour is tough to pull off mentally. What I am saying is that I quite enjoy running in a light rain and there are a lot of reasons why this is.

I live in a very populated city, the third most populated city in the United States, and almost anything you do is going to be crowded. A lot of people fear the rain though, and in the park exercise areas, almost everyone seems to clear out once the rain hits, and this is a wonderful factor indeed. The lack of people all over the place is the number-1 factor to why I like running in the rain, but there are more reasons.

This chart doesn't really tell the story I am trying to tell because this is actually a bit slower than I would normally go. But the thing is, I hadn't planned on running at all this day, this was just going to be a long walk of about 1 hour as a sort of rest day. The conditions were so perfect though that I decided to pick up the pace because I am a bit of an athlete, and walking to me is very boring.

This doesn't exactly tell the tale that I want to either, but because of the rain I was never overheating and I never felt like this was at all hard. In fact, I ran an extra kilometer at the end and that was just as easy as the first 5. Heat really does make a difference and I guess since the rain made all my clothes wet anyway, I wasn't as affected by the soaking wet from sweat aspect of it like I would be on a normal day. I don't mind being covered in sweat but it is nice to have some of the moisture be rain for a change.

I was not attempting to go fast. I had pushed myself a bit too hard on a 10k the day before so this was totally meant to be an easy recovery run. The rain just made it so much easier because of temperature and I really enjoyed that.

I had my phone in my pocket in a small Ziploc bag and this was not because of the rain. I always have my phone in a bag because I sweat so much that I have destroyed one phone, and critically damaged another one with my own sweat in the past. I still don't know why I sweat so much, but it has been this way my entire life, even when I was a teenager participating in all the sports and also very fit.

The only downside of running in the rain is if my socks get soaking wet and then I am risking getting blisters in the middle of my foot, which is never a good thing. There are probably specialized socks for this sort of thing but I have never looked into it.

If you know about such equipment, I would appreciate it if you let me know.

While other people run away from the rain, I think I am going to start to embrace it. This was one of the most enjoyable runs in the park that I have had ever, and especially in this super-hot summer.