It never rains ... but it pours!

Tonight I had arranged to meet the Tri Club Gang for a trail running session, with the promise of a chippy tea afterwards!

The only problem was ... the torrential rain!

I was secretly quite excited by the fact it was raining as it meant I finally got to test out my new Berghaus Vapourlight Hyper Smock 2 which claims to be the world's lightest waterproof jacket! 

I must admit when I first received this jacket I was slightly concerned about how thin and light it felt!  Surely something as unsubstantial as this wouldn't protect
me from the elements - especially living in the very wet, cold and windy Lake District!

Tonight certainly tested that out! 

We met at 6.30pm in Staveley which is approximately 5 miles from my home town of Kendal.

We were all kitted out in waterproofs and head torches for what we knew was going to be a tough, cold and wet run!

I'm not a big fan of jackets with hoods when I'm running as they never seem to stay up and just flap about being highly annoying.

Tonight it was raining so hard that I had no option but to put my hood up!

We set off at an fairly brisk pace until we turned onto a steep stony track that had decided it wanted to be a stream instead! As we headed up hill, the water cascaded down around our ankles and even my Gortex trail shoes had no hope in keeping my feet dry!

Despite the rain, and having very wet feet and legs I was strangely enjoying the experience!  My top half was very warm and dry, and amazingly the hood on my smock never flapped once! This jacket even covered my bum!  For the first time ever I didn't have a cold wet numb bum!

The lure of chips spurred us on as we battled the hills, mud and the rain!

Altogether we did 5.6 very wet miles and we all felt fantastic for being crazy enough to brave it when it would have been so easy to not have gone!

We got our chips and pretended to be teenagers by sitting in the bus shelter eating them!

I felt rather smug to discover that I was the only one to have actually stayed dry up top!  I was amazed that even my hair was dry!

The jacket packs down into a tiny bag!  Obviously with wearing the jacket tonight I didn't need this but I did find it very useful to store my chip money and car key in!

The bag with the jacket stuffed in!

This fit nicely into the zipped front pocket of the jacket keeping both dry!

So all in all a fantastic jacket that did exactly what it said it should!

I have never felt so excited about a piece of clothing before, but then again I have never had a running jacket that has actually kept the rain out either!

It will definitely be my garment of choice when running in inclement weather in the future!

You can view my run here!

This run take my weekly Jantastic total to 23.2 miles!

3 days remaining and already I have done better than last week!

Things are looking up!