Running In The Dark

Today is the winter solstice. The sun is at its southernmost point of the year and, in the northern hemisphere, we have our shortest day. In my area, sunrise is at 7:18 and sunset is at 4:33 (these numbers will differ a bit - people to the east of me in the Eastern Time Zone will see an earlier pair of numbers; to the west, later; but the time between will be the same; those north of me will have less time between the numbers; to the south, more time). For me, this means that we have eight and one-quarter hours of full daylight and a bit under nine hours of usable daylight. Now, if we take away time to prep for work and work time, it becomes clear that at this time of year, barring those who work early schedules or run during lunch, our training, if done outside, will be done in the dark.

Last night I had a nice, if unexceptional, training run. I did 5 (maybe 6 - I'm notorious for sloppy counts) laps of my local park starting at about 8:30PM. That put another 4 miles into my training log. I did a hard 10K racewalk on Sunday and my legs have been rebelling a bit (gotta stretch more!). This park closes at dark, but in conversations with cops, they've said essentially, "If you seem to have business here, were not going to be too aggressive about throwing you out." So, around I went. During my time there, it was quite pleasant. We had a full moon six days ago, and the clear skies were letting in the moon's reflected light. The temperature was probably ±25°F with the breeze making it feel like ±18°F. I was probably dressed a bit too warmly, the hat and double gloves letting me sweat a bit. I was utterly alone; no dog walkers, no police, no drive-thrus, just me. It was really quite nice...now if only I could do something about the cars passing constantly on the road outside the park.

All this said, I had a carless road, and cold, pleasant night, and solitude. If my legs hadn't been unhappy, I could have run for hours like that. It was really nice.