Yesterday morning my alarm went off at 5:45 I got up for my 8 mile run. I knew that it would be cold… but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I got dressed, but before I was headed out the door I heard the pouring rain on the skylights. 35 degrees and pouring rain? Forget it… even I am not that stupid (well… anymore). It wasn’t the cold that bothered me… I’ve ran in -35 degrees in Fairbanks Alaska for entire winters, but the cold combined with the rain is asking for trouble. I decided I would wait until after work and just go to the gym. We have a community center and even though I don’t have a membership I can go for $4 a pop. For the occasional run in crappy weather… that makes a lot more sense than buying a treadmill.
When I got home from work though… the rain had stopped, so instead of hitting the treadmill, I headed out into the darkness around 6:30 PM. It was still cold… 36 degrees maybe, but I was comfortable because the wind wasn’t blowing. It was strange running in the dark the entire time. I took a familiar route just to discover that some of it wasn’t lighted enough that I could see my feet. At times it was so dark, and my glasses so fogged up that I was in danger of running into something. More than once I flinched at something that wasn’t there.
At one point I run through a tunnel… which I now know is unlighted. When I was in the middle of the tunnel I could see nothing around me except… well… the light at the end of the tunnel. It was weird. Nothing but the echoing of my strides off the blackness… couldn’t see my arms or anything. Other times I ran through fog that reminded me a bit of ridding the chair lifts on the mountain when skiing. It was nice. It is one of those times when despite what seems to be forbidding weather, I looked around and thought…. AWESOME! Yeah, it was cold and dark, but it was also very peaceful… like running in a dream.
1 comment:
The most I ever ran on the treadmill was 14 miles - the last day of the year, last year. I had to surpass the maximum of 13 miles I had done until then, and the snow was knee-high everywhere. My biggest fear was someone would object to me monopolizing the treadmill for such a long time - it took hours, after all. But I got lucky, and I kept going for as long as it took. I was so happy afterward.
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