Last Night

Great run last night!

I put down 40 miles of relatively easy running yesterday. Since this was by far my longest run of the season, I kept the vertical fairly mellow and focused almost exclusively on patience. I ate well. I drank consistently. I walked the steepest sections and basically maintained an even pace throughout the day/evening. One of my main goals was to concentrate on good nighttime miles and was glad that despite minimized visibility due to a series of snow squalls my pace remained strong. Running at night is definitely a weakness of mine and in particular running into the night (as opposed to running toward the sunrise) seems to beat me up both mentally and physically. Hopefully yesterday was the beginning of solving this problem, rather than an aberration. I have recently wondered if part of the issue is the drop in temperature that typically happens after sunset, or if I simply let the little things get into my head because I worry obsessively about my pace slowing. In either case, if I ever hope to get stronger at the 100 mile distance, I need to keep working on running well during the darkness.

One of the best parts about last night was the ridiculous number of deer I came across -- it seemed every time I came around a bend another group of 2 or 3 deer started off to find better cover. Good times! Actually wanted to carry a camera, but because of the weather it seemed like I had already thrown everything but the kitchen sink into my nathan and didn't want another piece of the material world to hassle with for 7 or 8 hours so once again I am left with mental images only . . .