Easy run, interrupted

Last night I headed out for a 5 mile run, which was supposed to be run at an easy pace. The weather was great when I left my house - partly cloudy, still, and a comfortable 55 degrees. My plan was to do an out-and-back route that I've run a few times. Heading out things were feeling pretty good. I was keeping my heart rate around 65-70% max and maintaining about a 9:30 pace, which is pretty quick for me for that heart rate. When I got to

the turn-around point, about 2.5 miles from home, I noticed some lightning in the distance. You can see pretty far from where I was, and I didn't hear the thunder, so I felt like I was okay. Just to be safe, I turned my music way down so I could hear if the lightning got closer. About a mile from home it did. The distant lightning was suddenly very close, and it seemed like I was seeing it all around me. The thunder was pretty loud at this point, and pretty close to the flashes of light - so I knew it was too close for me to be out running. Also about this time it started raining - and I mean it was pouring. I was running through a residential area at this point - alot of tall houses and trees - so I didn't really feel like there was a good place to stop. From what I understand, the thing to do is to get into an open area away from trees, etc., and curl up in a ball on the ground. Well, the only open area would have been the middle of the street. So I decided to just get home and out of the storm asap. I picked up my pace averaging about an 8:20 pace the last 1.1 miles. A few minutes later, the storm passed. It was just bad luck that I happened to be out running during the 10 minutes or so that it stormed. It's just one of the hazards of running in this part of the country - these quick, violent thunder storms sometimes just pop up out of nowhere. I got caught out in one without a plan - bad move. I'll need to plan for this sort of thing so I can deal with it better next time it happens - because it probably will.

Have you ever got caught out running in a storm? How did you handle the situation?