Run Into The Shadows

Okay, so I'm sick now, after I thought I had an oncoming cold licked over the weekend. I'm ticked, too, because it's the kind of cold I just can't run through now, with the raw throat, swollen glands in the neck, cough that's trying to get into my chest and nose that is for demonstration purposes only, because there sure isn't any air passing through all that stuffiness. So, I'm looking ahead to a likely running purchase that I'll hopefully be well enough by Monday to use.

I've been doing that crack of dawn trail run with some of the local ladies. That first roll out of bed is the toughest part, but once I get myself out of the bed and subsequently out the door, I am never disappointed that I decided to haul my butt out of bed. The trail is challenging but not extraordinarily technical, and the low level talk with the ladies in an otherwise quiet world is a great way to start the day. For a time, the days were long enough that we'd get going down the little bit of paved road before hitting the trail, and then we'd already have enough light to see where we were going from the sun just beginning to rise.

Well, I realized this past Monday when I parked my car to wait for the ladies in total darkness, and then saw the light of their headlamps coming down the street in their neighborhood, that I was going to have to join the Cult of Headlamp Wearing Early Morning Trail Runners too. I had a friend a few years ago, before I was running, refer to this mythical group of women who got up at crazy hours-five, sometimes four in the morning, and wore lights on their heads as they ran through the darkness. Nobody had ever really SEEN them, though. I thought it was nuts. Who would do that? I should be in a warm bed at that hour. The joke's on me, though. I was lucky enough that their headlamps worked well enough that I could see okay if I stayed right behind them, but it's clear now that I really need my own to stay safe out there in the future. It turns out that this is a great time to squeeze in a run, especially since the family schedule goes haywire every now and again, and if I want to keep doing it I need to make sure I'm not risking life and limb in the dark.

The husband does actually have one of his own-he's used it for overnight snowshoe trips before. It's an old, heavy, clunky thing, though-not something that would work well for running. So, I think I will need to pay a visit to REI and get a little something like this (and, no, I'm not one of those "blog-ola" moms getting paid to rave about a product...though if Petzl or someone other company wants to send me a headlamp, I sure won't send it back in horror):


I already look sleepy and sweaty at that time so why not go the whole nine yards with a bright light shining from my forehead? I'm looking forward to seeing what they have in the store, and officially taking the final step toward craziness I scoffed at a few years ago.