Barefoot running and Rain

At 0530 this morning till a while ago it was raining reasonably hard - probably the wettest run this year.  I did the usual forest route (5 miles).  And yet it was warm - anything above about 15 degrees C registers as "warm" as far as I am concerned (else, in Ireland, it would rarely ever be warm!).  When running barefoot, the wetter the better: the stones feel less sharp and one's feet stay clean despite mud, whereas trainers would collect the mud and be rotting.  When warm one can afford to be scantily clad, whereas wet clothes feel horrible.

Such times remind me of "...and Mowgli, with the rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms, leaped back from a wall that was settling like a tired buffalo" (Letting in the Jungle). My parents had the blue, cloth-bound edition "All the Mowgli Stories" illustrated superbly by Stuart Tresilian.  Ever since first reading that line I have sought the experience of a hard, tropical rain storm.  


And of "Kim yearned for the caress of soft mud squishing up between the toes..."