Finally 400

Day 103 - December 18, 2007

Today was another day where actively managing my run was important, but I wasn’t able to avoid the cold. I would have liked/preferred to rest longer than 10 hours between runs, but knowing that my schedule tonight is pretty packed, I forced myself out early into the cold. Again, this is a situation where I might have gone for the bare minimum, but seeing that my mileage to date was 3.1 miles short of 400, I decided to extend it out a bit just to crack that milestone. Quirky, but it forced me to run 50% further than I would have otherwise.

It was funny to compare to last night’s moonlit run to this morning’s run after the moon had set and before the sun had come up. It was much darker and almost no visible shadows on the ground. I actually had to use my flash light this morning where as last night I could see well enough with just the light of the moon.

Over the last three months, I’ve noticed that my mood/attitude about running in the dark is much better when I have a little bit of moonlight to run by. I never realized just how much difference there was between a full moon and the new moon. Even the partial moon last night was enough light to allow me to see the road and my surrounding without batter powered illumination. I am going to start actively monitoring the moonrise/set times to see if I can add that to the mental algorithm I use to determine my best time to run each day. To keep going for 1000 days, I’m sure I’m going to need all the tricks I can come up with to keep me motivated.

Day: 103 Time/Date: 6:20 AM 12/18/2007 Weather: Clear, 20F
Run: Random Miles Miles: 3.3 Time: 24:24 Pace: 7:24 min/mile
Miles to Date: 400.2 Total Running Time: 49:12:11