Night Runs

It's always a little bit of a challenge to fit in an hour's running with work and family commitments, but I manage to do 60-90 minutes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes it's in the morning before work, but more often I head out, flashlight in hand, after reading the bedtime story. This means I'm rarely back before 10pm; thank goodness I still have a couple of nights a week free to watch the odd DVD with my wife.

My runs normally end up on the floodlit bike path around the local university with an occasional foray onto the trails that lead off it. What the students must think when they see me running around the campus with my backpack on I don't know. They rarely show any sign of noticing me though: I imagine their thoughts crammed into sections: course work, socialization, the occasional "big issue" and perhaps even less often, their parents and things back home; not much space to give me a second glance, which works fine for me.

The excitement comes when I set of the well-lit path and on the trail: immediately the world shrinks to the few feet I can see in front of me and my mind becomes fully focused on the art of running over rough ground.

I feel that holding a flashlight in my hand gives me a better feel for the texture of the terrain over using a headlamp; my Surefire G2X Pro does the job nicely (haven't needed to change the batteries after 14 months of use) and I mainly use it on the 15 lumen setting; that is, unless I get startled by something leaping out at me in the dark (chained up dogs and the odd deer), at which point the full 200 lumens is very reassuring.