Sometimes a Rainstorm Works Like Rose-Colored Glasses

All the weather forecasts promised scattered thundershowers. Was it too much to hope they’d scatter around the marathon course and not on top of it? A brief downpour pounded my windshield as I drove to the marathon start, but the steady drops gave way to a drizzle, and then to a mist. When I ventured outside after picking up my race number in the Ellerbe Springs Inn, the precipitation had stopped, and only the cloud cover remained.

But I heard the thunder a few miles into the run: a far off rumble at first. Stay far away, I wished silently. The thunder answered me, closer this time. Pass on by, I thought at it. It answered me again, closer still. And then the rain broke through.

Scattered showers, I reminded myself. Don’t be a wimp, I told myself. This will pass. You can get wet.

The rain pelted my forehead and ran down my face. My contact lens shifted. I shut my eye like I do in the shower when I turn my face into the stream of water. I shut it tight to hold in the lens. I stopped worrying about being a wimp; I stopped noticing the way my socks sloshed in my shoes. Because the truth is, I have good vision only through one eye, and I forgot to bring an extra lens for that eye, and oh, as I was leaving my apartment complex I thought about going back in for the eyeglasses I’d meant to stick in my bag, just to be safe. Only I didn’t go back for them.

Well, you are going to have to settle down here in North Carolina, I thought. Because if anything happens with this contact lens, there’s no way to get home.

I ran on in the rain with one eye shut. I passed mile 11. And I knew I was approaching the BIG HILL I had heard the other runners talking about, the one called “Hannibal” because, in the words of a marathon alumna and aid station volunteer, it will eat you up. The world appeared blurry and far away. I could make out the road immediately ahead of me and not much else.

I surprised myself by feeling amused. Here I am running in the rain, half blind, I thought. And I’m always worried about so many things, like this big scary hill that I can’t really see, but I never worried about my contact falling out in the rain in the middle of the marathon.

Now, my theory is that rainstorm was nature’s version of rose-colored glasses. I didn’t see much of the big scary hill, but soon the rain tapered off and the hill was behind me, and I was running in a cool breeze with my contact still in place. The thunder stopped rumbling at me, and my lens stayed in and didn’t make any more trouble and I was able to see to drive home.

In fact, it turned into a pretty great day. Thanks to the rain?