The other day I begrudgingly set out for a run in the pouring rain. It wasn’t the refreshing kind of rain that invigorates an early summer run and leaves you feeling cleansed. It was a chilly and breezy late-Spring rain that freezes your ears and knuckles because it wouldn’t occur to you to wear a hat and gloves in May. I had no iPod to distract me from my drippy misery because I’ve killed one too many mp3 player in the rain, so my little purple musical companion sat warm and dry on my desk while I listened to the squish, squish, squish of my toes in my saturated shoes. My mood was as gray as the sky, and after about a half hour of procrastination, I was out there just to tick off the miles on my week’s training plan. Let’s just say my glass was not half full.

Yet, about midway into the run, my tank made its way from half empty to half full. I was thinking about options for staying dry in wet activities and remembering my disappointment when I first went white water rafting and discovered that a wet suit does not, in fact, keep you dry. It was a pretty ridiculous assumption to have thought that a neoprene suit with openings for head, feet, and hands would keep out river water. Running in a wet suit did not seem like a viable option anyway.

But, while I was entertaining myself by picturing my neighbors’ reactions to seeing me running down our street in a wet suit, I remembered the rafting technique I’d learned as a total novice who was handed a paddle and some unexpected rough water.

In the midst of intense research for my dissertation several years ago, my father pulled me out of my head by driving us six hours into the lush and desolate mountains of West Virginia to go white water rafting down the New River. Like my run the other day, it was damp and chilly. And like this Spring, we’d had a winter so cold my bones felt brittle and my skin was parched from hibernation. Like much of the East above the mid-Atlantic region, West Virginia had received powerful snows, and the few warm days in April had poured the melted snow down the mountains and into the waterways that wind through them.

Naively expecting a quiet paddle down the river to relax, I was not prepared for the Class 5 rapids that the tour guides enthusiastically promised us, their thrilled expressions meeting mine of apprehension. My mounting anxiety was not eased by the bus ride to the launching point, on which a guide lectured us for 45 minutes about how not to drown in the water that gushed over sharp rocks and vacuuming cyclones beneath the surface.

Once in the water, we made our way with expert guidance. We endured several “minor” Class 2 and 3 rapids and were promised Class 5 in the afternoon. Oh, goody. My impulse was to curl up in the fetal position in the middle of the raft, but in the more adverse waters, our guide shouted that we should lean out and ‘dig in’ our paddles in order to stay on the raft and not be thrown into the water. The further we could drive them into the water, the more stable we would be. You have got to be kidding me, I thought.

When all was said and done and I’d kept myself in the raft by digging in, I was able reflect on the lessons it taught: in order to stay out of trouble, I had to anchor myself in it with the only instrument I had. By fearfully leaning toward the center of the raft, I would be likely to find myself ejected into a pretty dreadful bath.

White-knuckled on my paddle, I leaned out of the raft and pushed my arm deep into the water and towards the river and my fear. This counter-intuitive move is what I thought about the other day, halfway through a run in the cold, windy rain. No, I wasn’t afraid of drowning in rain, and splashing through puddles doesn’t make me anxious. But sometimes, if you dig into the source of your negativity, you actually wind up with something positive, whether it’s conquering fear or simply finding pleasure in the context of a gloomy situation.

And so, I dug in. I leaned forward into the rain and picked up the pace, not because it would get me home sooner but because it feels good to push yourself. What started as an activity that took me 30 minutes to get myself out the door to undertake became surprisingly fun. If you’re already soaked, you might as well enjoy it—a lesson taught to me by that wet suit on the river and a chilly Spring shower these years later. I listened to the squishing of my feet complement the whishing of my jacket sleeves against my torso, and to tell you the truth, I took the long way home, adding a half mile to my route.

So dig in to the source of your reluctance, and see what unexpected territory you might cover. It might be white water or it might just be gloomy rain, but a new river awaits us when we lean into it.

Photo Credit: malikyounas

KRISTINA PINTO was an academic in gender and psychology and is now a mother, runner, and writer currently working on a book about how running enhances motherhood. She also blogs for the Competitor Group at Marathon Mama »

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