Riding on a rainy day is often worth it for the fun. Once its over. 

By Christopher Cudworth

It wasn’t just raining. One of the hurricanes from the Gulf Coast had made it all the way up the middle of the continent and seemed determined to empty its guts on the streets and highways of Illinois. And I decided to go running in it.

The giant drops pouring from the sky actually hurt your skin when they hit. But you get used to that. Heavy rain makes a funny sound on the brim of your cap, and I laughed at that. The gutters were already full and running fast when I headed out the door and west to make a 4 mile loop.

It was windy and raining, which is always a weird combo when you’re running. There were little whitecaps on the bigger puddles. Seriously, it was like looking at little live maps of the oceans, like some book in the Harry Potter series where the pictures come to life.

My old shoes didn’t care if they got wet. But it was wetter than wet. I soon stopped worrying about the rain at all and just ran through the puddles with each foot making very temporary indentations in the surface of the small lakes all around.

Drivers going slow with their headlights on beeped and honked from inside their cars. The vehicles looked like they had clear frosting on them, like donut glaze.

Just when it seemed it could rain no harder the skies gave a shiver and walls of water came out of the sky. I’d never seen anything even close to that amount of water in the air. It made me cackle when one of those whirling sheets swung over and hit me in the side. The sensation was similar to when a person jumps off the diving board and does a jackknife or a cannonball to send a wave of water over the edge of the pool.

It was silly at some point. My socks sagged over the edges of my shoes. Inside my running shoes there was water squishing around my toes and even lifting my orthotics a bit. I was hydroplaning. But it was a gas. 4 miles went by in a blur, it was so wet and wild.

But I always say you aren’t really wet until the water’s running down the crack of your ass. And that day running in the hurricane got me wet all over but my ass crack stayed safe.

Not so the day my buddies chickened out on riding in the rain. 15 miles into the ride with a torrent of squalls roaring across the Illinois landscape I could barely see out the surface of my sunglasses and my helmet sounded like a tin roof the rain was falling so hard.

And finally, at 18 miles the water formed a small lake over my sacrum and a mountain stream poured down my butt crack. The cold sensation made me jump even through I was wet everywhere else.

“Now I’m wet!” I yelled. “Really, really wet.”

Most people like to avoid running and riding in the rain. But they’re missing one of nature’s most thrilling and humbling adventures all at once.

That guy out running and riding in the spring and summer rain? That’s me. No apologies.