Rain King

Friday night I told friends that if I woke up on Saturday morning and it was pouring down rain then I was going back to sleep and abandoning plans to run the Tom King 1/2 Marathon. So Saturday morning when I awoke to pouring rain (plus bonus lightning and thunder) I went right back to bed. However, after lying there a few minutes I decided that I would regret it if I didn't run so I got up, got dressed, fashioned a nifty little poncho out of a garbage bag, and headed for the stadium. During the drive there was more lightning and thunder, which got me hopeful that they would cancel the thing due to safety reasons. However, more dedicated runners than myself apparently enjoy running in such weather, so I was disappointed to find that everything was going on as scheduled.
Fortunately it was mostly good news from there on out. Once I started running and got into my pace, the rain wasn't so bothersome. The course was flat (though kind of boring), however it was neat to run into LP Field at the end. The best part was that I beat my two hour goal, running the half-marathon with a chip time of 1 hour, 57 minutes, 13 seconds. That's a 8 minute, 57 second per mile pace. Though at the end I never thought I would be dry again, it was worth getting out of bed for. The bad news is I'm scheduled to run twice as far at the end of next month. We'll see how that goes.