Day 4,343—2 Runs until TK 100 and the Running in the Rain—

 

     Running in a thunderstorm opens a portal to all my experiences of running in the rain. I wear my rain jacket and listen to the tapping on my hood until I get flustered and stop caring about my head getting wet, so I take my hood off. I see the flash of the lightning and look in awe as the sky lights up, like someone turned a stage light on in a pitch-dark auditorium. I think of getting lost during the Lighthouse 100 in Michigan, running down the highway while only seeing the smears of light from the semitrucks. I think of the Shawnee Hill when it rained so hard that I got turned around and took shelter under a boulder just to look at my watch to see which way I was going. I remember the Berryman 50 when the rain turned the path into a creek, and the mud was so thick it was hard to keep your shoes on. I think of the Dark 2 Dawn, the year that I won and met Jeremiah for the first time. I was so unhappy during that race, doing the whole thing by myself. I didn’t even realize I took the lead until he told me.