How i learned to stop worrying and love the rain

Well, race day is here and I can finally stop obsessing about this.

For at least ten days I’ve watched cold trade with rain for which element would cause the most pain at today’s Manchester Road Race. Last week we were looking at a dry low thirties and I commented, That’s better than a wet forties.

The weather gods are laughing, or at least chortling, at me now.

I’ll snap back by running one of the oldest continually run races in the US for the first time with my sons. These x-country veterans are bound to beat me, seeding in the sub 30 and sub 36 pens. I’ll come from behind with the sub 42 crowd. Somewhere in the crowd will be my brother, a blast from the past to run with him again.

It’s been years, maybe a decade since I’ve made my way up the mile-plus heartbreak hill and then wound my way back down into the thronging crowds and raucous live music, and yet it feels like something I did just yesterday.

A thanksgiving road race is so much more than a turkey trot. It can be a fountain of youth.

And today, this fountain will be wet!

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