You know what is not fun? Running in a hailstorm. Seriously.

The wonderful thing about being a blogger is that no matter what crazy, #$%ed up shit happens to you, you can always think, “At least this will make a great blog posting!”  Which was, in fact, exactly what Alicia said yesterday when we were out for our 20 km run – the last of our long training runs before our upcoming half marathon – when we got caught in a hailstorm.  A hailstorm in mid June. WTF?

Now, I should add that when we started our run in south Vancouver, it was quite hot and sunny, and so we were dressed in our sunny weather running clothes and were all hot and sweaty for the first half of the run.  Then when we hit Kits beach, it started to cloud over. And then came the thunder and lightening.  And then it started to rain.  Now, we’ve had quite a few runs this season where it has started to rain the moment we got home and so when we felt the first few raindrops and we were several km from home we were all “I guess our luck has finally run out.  Oh well, at least it’s refreshing.  Wait a sec, is that HAIL?”  And then we were immediately drenched, as the rain started coming down *really* hard along with the hailstones that were pelting us.  I could feel the puddles in my running shoes and I could barely see because the rain that was pouring over me and bringing all that salty sweat into my eyes (I know, sexy, right?)  So there we are, several km from Alicia’s place with no options but to keep running, our clothes *completely* soaked through, our eyes burning with salt, our skin freezing from the cold, cold rain and being pelted with chunks of ice falling from the sky.  And we are all, “ISN’T IT SUPPOSED TO BE MID-JUNE???”

We took a photo when we got back to Alicia’s place, but it doesn’t really do justice to how completely drenched we were:

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The smiles in this photo are because we are finally done the run!

Our half marathon is in 12 days.  Keep your fingers crossed for us that race day is devoid of hail!

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Re: BethCancel

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  • I suppose we could have, but by the time we hit a major street where we could find a store (we were on a residential street when it started), we were already soaked, so we would have had to stand around a store soaking wet and freezing for who knows how long. Plus, if we’d stopped running then, at about the 12 or 13 km mark, and stood around for a while, it would be really hard to get running again. One you stop, your body is like “OK, run is over now!”

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  • Oh, yeah, that makes complete sense. My body would be like \OK, run is over now!\ the moment the hail started falling whether I stopped or not. I’m with Kalev on this one. Apparently it wasn’t the nice big quarter, I mean inch, I mean 3 centimeter diameter (what is the common hail size description in Canada by the way?) hail we had here a few weeks ago because you would’ve already started bruising by the time you took that picture!

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  • We were still 7-8 km from home, and we would have had to have gotten home somehow!

    The hailstones weren’t 3 cm in diameter (thank the FSM!), but they were still sizable enough to hurt when they hit you. Keep your fingers crossed for me that we get better weather on race day!

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  • @extragoode: you have to understand, it’s not like runners are *rational* people to start with (I mean, YAY, let’s run 21km for FUN!) , so of course none of this makes sense to ordinary people. 😀

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  • Run for fun? What the hell kind of fun is that? (Back to the Future 3 1990) I was in a hurry today so I ran a couple blocks and about died, but that was partly the traffic I was crossing’s fault.

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  • I told a friend of my bf’s that I was heading out for 16 km run a few weeks ago and his reaction was, “What the hell are you running from???”

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