Warm rain

It's been gloriously sunny for the past couple of days, and was again today until....... the sky clouded over very suddenly in mid-afternoon.

As I headed out on a hurried shopping expedition a little while ago, big, fat drops of rain were starting to fall intermittently. Warm rain.

That was a pleasant surprise. It has been unseasonally cool here just lately; and we don't usually start to get really warm rain until July and August.

I love rain like that - and will often go walking or running in it (the bao'an - the teenage gate guards at the front of my apartment building - think I'm crazy!).

I had been planning to go for a run late this afternoon, and at present the rain - light, warm - would be rather refreshing to run in. The trouble is, it threatens to get heavier. Much heavier. And that might not be quite so much fun. Especially when the drains clog - as they invariably do - and the streets start to flood and I find myself splashing ankle-deep through dilute sewage. No, not nice.

Another excuse to cry off! My running regime has been terrible of late: I've had very little free time, and when I have had some, the foul air quality has made me a prisoner of my apartment, or I've just been feeling too lazy as I suffer from the cumulative exhaustion of repeated late nights and bad sleeping. The Great Wall Marathon is coming up this weekend, but I am in no kind of shape to attempt it again this year, as I had hoped; at present, I can barely run even a half-marathon (which means that I am about the most out-of-shape I have been in the last 4 or 5 years!).

Darn it! I really ought to go out now, rain or no rain. This is the first completely free day (well, not completely: I've had a few meetings to discuss new work opportunities to take care of) I've had in ages, and I ought to make the most of it. I'm being a WIMP.....