Running in the Rain

There's something alluring about looking out of rain-streaked windows at the outside world. Rain is attractive - if that is the right word, and if a cynic may use it. I enjoy the beat of pulsating rain drops on the ground, the curious sheen water imparts to the road surface best appreciated from the interior of a moving car, and the cleansing sensation felt through breathing in the cold fresh air. Rain is best appreciated from an insider's perspective, though - through running in the rain, you feel especially at one with yourself. There's nothing but the falling rain to judge you. Raindrops are unusually lenient judges of character and purpose. As your fatigued steps start to falter, the cool rain invigorates you like a numbing cold shower. The end-point suddenly seems within reach, after all. Your footfalls begin to increase in frequency, your posture becomes more erect and purposeful, and your mind returns back to the run, where it should have been all this time. You sprint, breaths taken in short sharp gasps that stretch the corner of your lips and sting the back of your throat, arms and legs thrown as far as they will go in propelling you forward. And you go. You go.

Real people who avoid running in the rain will never understand the cleansing, clarion sensation that only a good shower can give. Their loss. Rain cannot be fully appreciated if you are divorced from it. Each time I take to the pavements or the trails with raindrops blossoming all around me, I feel like a child again. I imagine myself stripped of all but the innermost masks by the rain. Again my idealistic self is reborn, yet and yet again, and I recall a time when I wasn't cynical. I remember standing before rain-streaked windows gazing at the outside world going by me, and wondering when I would be like those people, able to go into the outside world. Now that the time has come, I'm certain I will relish the chance. Rain is attractive, in its own timeless way. I like running in the rain. I look forward to running in the rain again.