Time Change Night Run!!

Most people dread Daylight Savings Time and the looming time change and all the re-adjustment it causes in the morning and evening.  To me, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to go for a run in the middle of the night, and since we were "losing and hour"....why not lose an hour out of the middle of a run??

Sometimes the best ideas happen at the last moment; or maybe I just like to be impulsive, but there was only 12 hours until start time of the run if we were going to take full advantage of the time change!!  Luckily, I had all of Saturday afternoon to spread the word on Facebook.  Michal and Daryl jumped at the idea of a middle of the night adventure, then Zanne got on board too.  We tried to convince others from the local run group to join us, but for some reason, most people had random excuses they were not able to make it.

Maybe it was because the daytime temperature was hovering around -20, but the forecast was calling for intermittent snow and -10 for the night.  Full moon was less than 24 hrs away, so if the clouds cleared, there would be no need for headlamps.

Saturday was a lazy day for me, and since Friday was the day after my birthday, Cheri made homemade pizza for supper and peanut butter cream pie for desert...and then there was wine and a movie top off the evening!!  It may not have been my best choice for pre-run nutrition, but it was meant to be a fun run, and I already had time on my side...

After the movie, everyone in the house was in bed shortly after 10PM.  In an effort to not wake up the whole house in my night time escapades, I prepared my running gear and post race meal....then looked at running shoes online.  There are so many options for footwear available!!  I will never have time to try them all out....how do you simply choose ONE pair of shoes?!?!

At 12:00, I started getting dressed in my running clothes.  The dog shuffled sleepily out of the bedroom and into the living room and stared at me dumbfounded as I was getting ready to go.  Even though he never runs with me (Shi Tzu's legs are FAR to short to maintain my pace...) he knows the drill and always watches with anticipation that MAYBE I will take him.  For some reason, he didn't seem to eager to join me tonight, and promptly fell asleep again at the top of the stairs while I was getting ready.

On the drive to the trailhead at Evergreen Park, the thermometer in the truck read -9 degrees; and just like the weatherman predicted, there was about an inch of fresh snow on the ground and it was still gently falling.  When I got far enough away from the city lights, I could see the full moon shining through the snow flurries and casting eerie shadows in the woods.

A quick pre-run meeting in the parking lot decided that the creek would be our final destination for the nights run.  That should give us 12 to 15 kilometres there and back.  At exactly 1:00 AM, we were running out of the brightly lit parking lot and into the darkness of the wintery woods.  Daryl and Michal lead the way and Zanne and I brought up the back of the group.  Im sure Zanne thought I was being nice, going slow and stay with her; but really, I preferred her pace over Daryl and Michal's pace.  This was a "fun run" after all!!!

The night time trails did not disappoint.  The snow flurries slowed then stopped all together, then the crisp moonlight illuminated the spruce forrest and brought out all the shadows.  Luckily I had Zanne with me for protection from any hungry bears that may be avoiding hibernation with hopes of the odd slow runner still spending time running the trails.

Randomly throughout the night Zanne would let out her "Bear Deterrent Call".  "WOOOOEEEAAAAAWWWW!!!!"  That roughly translates into bear language as "I-AM-BIGGER-AND-FASTER- THAN-YOU-AND-I-WILL-EAT-YOU-BEFORE-YOU-EAT-ME!!!"

The bears seem to understand what she was saying to them, because they kept their distance; but every time she spoke to them she also made me JUMP out of my skin!!  From my experience, that is also the sound that strange night time creatures make in the woods!!  I remember that sound from when I was a kid....

As we got closer to the creek, we started down into the thickly wooded creek bottom.  The dense spruce canopy blocked out any light from the moon.  I switched my headlamp back on to illuminate the roots that sprawled across the trail under the snow.

We hadn't seen Daryl and Michal in quite a while but they assured us they wouldn't go to far ahead.  I kept expecting to see the light from their headlamps as we rounded every corner....  When we got to the creek, I spotted something behind a log.  For a moment, it looked like an animals hungry eyes glowing in the darkness.  Then I realized that it was Michal crouching behind a stump....the reflective material on his running clothes gave away his hiding spot!!

"Zanne and Michal looking at 'something'
in the woods..."

Even though the run had been more focused on fun, rather than pace, we took a bit of a break at the creek.  Our GPS watches said it was 1:57.  In 3 minutes, we would lose an hour off our running time!! We took the opportunity to do another Facebook live update....surprise, surprise....no one was watching.  It seemed most people were sleeping.

After watching the time go from 1:59 AM to 1:00 AM, we were please that we were well ahead of schedule so we started back up the hill and the trail back to the parking lot.  On the run back, there was less chatter.  Zanne's "bear deterrent calls" came farther apart and the flat trail allowed us to fall into a steady rhythm, running through the freshly fallen snow.

Running through the moonlit woods, the quiet darkness seemed to take me back about 30 years; when I was running the sled dogs through the bush to check the our rabbit snare line.  I remember  leaving the house after school and not being able to finish the loop before the sun would dip below the Yukon mountains; the darkness would swallow up me an my dog.  Most trips weren't during a full moon like tonight and when I was young, I didn't have the luxury of a headlamp.  All I could do was trust Silver to stay on the trail and lead me home.

Zanne's yelling brought me out of my dreaming... she said she was falling asleep on the trail!!  It was past her bed time.  I agreed, it was well past my bed time too; but for some reason, I was very alert and drowsiness had not yet hit me.

"Im falling asleep back here, Phil!!"

The run along the power line was kind of mind numbing.  The short up and down oscillations from the ATV's in the sand, made for challenging running the the darkness with less than ideal depth perception.  When we cut back into the woods for the last portion of the single track trail, our pace naturally increased.

I could tell I was starting to fatigue (or I was running too fast) because my eyes couldn't process all the terrain and hazards that were coming at me.  I managed to make it back onto the wider trail without colliding with any trees or stumps.  Our pace slowed to a more maintainable speed when we got to the ditch portion of the run.  We ran intervals for the last kilometre or two because Zanne said her hip flexers were very tight.

Then, when the parking lot was in sight, she started to sprint ahead!!  Haha!!  I know THAT trick!!  The race was on!!  Daryl and Michal greeted us with high-five's when we got to the vehicles, then is was time to calculate our running time!!

We left the parking lot at 1AM sharp, and thanks to Daylight Saving's Time, we arrived back at the parking lot at 1:47AM....not bad for a 13 kilometre fun-run!!