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(Now I've got that U2 song "Ultraviolet" stuck in my head!)
Once again Haven and I took to the streets of Lowell in the pre-dawn darkness for a 3-mile run. I run in the streets instead of on sidewalks because the latter can be very uneven, booby-trapped with low-hanging tree branches, or might not even exist in front of the older houses. The streets here are safer, day and night, but in darkness I want to be sure I'm visible.
Passive visibility - the type provided by reflective items - is certainly valuable but it requires someone else to shine a light on me. A car might not see me approaching on a perpendicular path, or another unlighted jogger or cyclist (I've seen both) could be a risk as well.
Active visibility - the type that provides its own light source - is what I recommend for running in the dark. Let me tell you about the three lights that Haven and I use when we're out before sunrise. The effect of these lights can be seen in the photos below:
Haven is wearing a blue-and-white Bling Bling Blinker, which I wrote about recently. It's a small but quite bright clip-on light that strobes between a blue and a white LED very rapidly. For good measure Haven also has a generic orange reflective sporting dog collar. Keeping us together is a Just-a-Cinch leash, which was designed with built-in reflective piping and I reviewed it here.
On my head is a Princeton Tec EOS headlamp that I originally purchased for adventure racing. It runs on three AAA batteries for about 1-2 hours on maximum brightness, which will give you good visibility 100 feet ahead of you and will illuminate reflective items (e.g. street signs) about 150 yards away. It has three brightness settings; in the photo you're seeing the dimmest setting so that I don't blow out the camera. It can last for many, many hours on the dim setting, but I always use the brightest and use rechargeable batteries. This headlamp is simple and comfortable and even waterproof! I can attest to that after falling overboard during a 4:00am canoe leg down an obstacle-ridden river... what a way to start a 15-hour race!
The red light you see on the back of my head is a simple Fun Source Safety Light clipped to the headband of my headlamp. This serves as my "tail light" for anyone approaching from behind. I don't think it's waterproof but it survived my dunking that I described above! I've used it for two years and haven't had to change the batteries yet.
Some of these items are cheap. The Bling Bling Blinker and the Fun Source Safety Light were $5 each. The Just-a-Cinch leash retails for $20 but I bought that more for utility than visibility. The Princeton Tec EOS headlamp set me back $40 (plus another $25 for batteries and a charger) but it's well worth it - the headlamp is the most important item to have when running in darkness. Why? Because it'll show me the cracks I'm about to trip over, the ice I'm about to slip on, and the people walking nearby that otherwise look like shadows. Plus it grabs the attention of motorists when you point the beam right into their windshield.
In fact, the first time I ran with Haven in the dark I had nothing special except the headlamp. When cars approached, I would face the beam towards the car, then point it down at Haven so they were aware I had a dog with me. Now that she's illuminated, I don't have to do that but having a powerful, directable beam is quite useful.
Ideally I'd like to have some reflective clothing - most of my running garments are the cheap kind, but the good ones usually have some reflective elements built right in.
Come to think of it, running in the dark can be just as safe as running in the daylight. First of all, there's less traffic in the wee hours. More importantly, an actively illuminated runner is very eye-catching at night - think of how often you notice the guy wearing blinking lights in the dark as you drive to work versus the average daytime runner. So yes, it can be very safe running in the dark if you choose it to be. Best of all, you get to enjoy the stillness and solitude of running without the sun!
I forgot to mention earlier that on Thursday morning I went running with Haven; yes this was the same day that I also did some speedwork on the treadmill. It was a calm but chilly 10 degrees, with clear skies allowing the moonlight to help add some glow to the darkness.
Because of this darkness I recently bought a little Bling Bling Blinker for Haven to make her easily visible to any traffic. I've already had my own headlamp and taillight, but our dogs deserve a similar measure of safety. We bought the blue one, which blinks an alternating blue and white light.
These lights are bright and flash very rapidly, giving the effect of a strobe light at a disco. If you ever take one of these into a dark closet and turn it on I bet you'd have a seizure! Luckily out on the road there was enough other ambient light (the moon, my headlamp) to soften the effect of the hyper strobe, plus the openness of the outdoors reduces the amount of reflection.
Haven didn't seem to mind at all except when trying to navigate the dark garage with just her seizure light for illumination. Now we're all set - I'm lighted, she's lighted, the Just-a-Cinch leash is reflective. It's hard to get up that early for running, but it sure feels good sitting at work in the morning, recovering from a nice run with my dog.
101 miles on the year following this morning's run with Haven! We went 3.1 miles in the dark, pops-style. I ran hard to one light pole, then easy to the next one, then hard to the third one, and so on for the whole run. Haven loved the fast part but got impatient with the slow stuff.
101 miles in 20 separate runs, just over 5 miles per run average. Even though it was a goal to run more frequently this year, I'm still happily surprised with how well I've been doing at it. My body is actually getting acclimated to this frequency as my legs can recover from easy runs in less than a day; hard runs still take a day or so.
What's helped me do this is having a plan: Mon, Wed, Fri I join my co-workers for an easy-paced 5 mile run, although I run Friday's as a negative split (easy first half, hard second half). Tue and Thu I do speed work, which can be track laps, pops, hill repeats, tempo runs, or other similar workouts. Saturday is a day off. Sunday is a long run; 8-12 miles so far but that will go up when the weather warms up.
The result is that if I miss a day, my plan is all messed up so even if I don't feel like running on a given day, it's mentally easier to just do it and keep the plan intact instead of having to figure out something.
It's very, very early in the year but I'm on pace for about 300 runs, which is amazing considering that last year was the most I ever ran and I went out just 143 times! Compared to 128 times in 2005 and 101 in 2004. Hopefully I can keep this up, but I'm sure that at some point it won't be as smooth sailing as it has been...
I ran twice today! Both were rather short, but remember I'm trying to improve speed this year. I noticed in my running logs for 2004, 2005 and 2006 that my average pace was right around 10:00 miles for all three years! While I've been going farther and farther, I haven't become much faster.
Well today was a decent start. O' dark thirty this morning I leashed up Haven to my brand new Just-a-Cinch leash that Amanda got me for Christmas and struck out under a bright, full moon. I started out fast and kept it up for 12 minutes before slowing for a couple, then I pretty much alternated fast and slow every two minutes until I got back home 2.9 miles later. We did it in 23 minutes, good for an 8:00 pace, so my first 12 minutes were probably 7:30 or so.
Funny story of the run was that Haven got freaked out by a Christmas tree! Someone had put their old live tree on the curb for pickup and in the moonlit darkness Havy must've thought it was a monster and wouldn't go anywhere near it!
By the way, that Just-a-Cinch leash is awesome! It has reflective fibers woven in for visibility, it has a round (instead of flat) cross-section, and best of all there's a slight amount of stretch to it so there's less jarring whenever Haven spots a squirrel and tries to take my arm off.
When I got home from work I felt like running some more, so I did. Wary of over-doing the mileage, I decided to do a short run and make up for the decrease in miles with an increase in speed. I even took both dogs with me! It started raining as soon as I walked down the driveway and it was a balmy 47 degrees out! Great running weather. The first minute felt good but at my fast pace I felt pretty wasted for the rest of the run. Luckily it only lasted 1.4 miles and it felt like 10-11 minutes. To my amazement when I finished my watch read 8:41 - that's a 6:12 pace!! Wicked. Earlier this summer I was happy to run a 1/4 mile lap on a track in 90 seconds (a 6:00 pace). Maybe the dogs were pulling me along a bit, but I also had to stop once to untangle their leashes.
Must remember to take it easy running tomorrow at work...