Heavy Rain Predicted for This Saturday's 10K Trail Race

In years gone by it seemed to be a recurring problem when, on the morning of a running race I had signed up for, the temperatures would severely spike downward.  Take my first half-marathon in February 2010, for example: for that Sunday morning alone, it got down to about 25 degrees when the race began at 7...very uncomfortable for an almost lifelong Floridian like me.  Over and over this kept happening...until recently.  Now there is a new weather phenomenon affecting races I plan to enter: rain, rain, and more rain (and sometimes lightning and high winds)...

I stayed out of the Ocala Half-Marathon this year because of an unusually strong storm system that just happened to pass through the area on the morning of the race.   Earlier this month I ran a local 10K race with rain threatening at any moment...the downpour luckily held off until I was in my car right afterward, driving home.  And now I am looking to this weekend's race, the 10K Trail of Payne run in Paynes Prairie State Park a few miles south of Gainesville.  The terrain is almost all trail, and the website promises some stretches where it is a bit muddy.  Well, with the weekend's forecast for heavy rains...starting on Friday, the day before the race...not only will I have to run through a lot a precipitation, but the course itself might become so compromised with extremely muddy trails and slippery grass surfaces that just getting through it and finishing, whatever the means and however slowly, would be a great victory.  Part of me wants to just scratch it all...after all, I haven't yet signed up and paid the entry fee.  But part of me wonders whether this might just be a fun adventure to experience.  And yet another part of me is concerned about my healing right foot and whether I'll be ready to run Saturday morning's race.  That's two parts against and one part for...I'll just have to wait and see what I decide to do on Saturday morning, I suppose...