Running in the Dark Again – 11-21-17

If you know me at all, you also know that I am not crazy about running after dark out here in the rural area where I live. Not that I don’t feel safe enough or anything like that, it is just that I don’t enjoy the feeling of not being able to see what is going on around me. There are not any street lights out here and that thin beam of light makes it so that I don’t step on or in something that I will regret. When you factor in getting blinded by vehicle lights as they go by if I don’t look down and have a visor of some sort on – I am not thrilled about running in the dark.

That being said, there are times when you have to – if you want to get a workout in.

Which was the case tonight. We did our usual Tuesday drive over to Lancaster, NH and back this afternoon. Hopefully things will be resolved sooner rather than later and the trips over and back will be only if we decide to go over. However, when we got back it was getting dark and by the time I got changed and ready to run, it was dark.

This week’s focus is learning lean, which is a bit different from my old run tall mantra and I already have a feeling it will be one of those more difficult focuses for me to master. However, it is something that I have done in short spurts and have felt what a positive difference it can make in my running.

I did the 5 minutes of practicing getting my lean on – 3 steps to engage lean, before starting running. I hate doing drills before a run, but I did it felt pretty positive about starting running with a lean.

When it is dark, it is a lot harder for me to judge my pace, so I focused more on a faster cadence throughout the run in addition to today’s plan which was to focus on leaning from my ankles and the “C” shape for alternating periods.

Which went fairly well, although when I met vehicles, my focus was on running safely versus anything else, since most of them didn’t adjust their high beams and once I forgot to lower my hat visor down in time and got a good case of night blindness, which caused me to really slow down until it cleared. I didn’t make that mistake again.

The run itself was pretty good and nothing hurt, which is becoming something I would love to repeat quite often over – say the next 20 years :-).

Yeah, it was another run in the dark, but I made it back home safely and enjoyed it.

However, I have a feeling that pretty soon the local coyotes will be making their presence known in the area (I thought I heard a few yips off in the distance) and then the night running might be a bit more of an adventure.

Their yips, barks and howls in the woods beside you, while you are running are more than a little unnerving. You wonder if they are looking at you as prey or just jogging along side you wondering what is that stooped thing running on that black hard stuff. Either way, when they start that stuff, I usually head for the house and call it a night. I gotta admit that it does make the hair on the back of my neck stand up and I do tend to have a much faster pace than other times.

That is when our new elliptical will be nice.