My Night Run!

Leg 2 began for me around 11:34 pm on Saturday. I took over from noels71 outside a bank and coffee house in the town of Corte Madera. This night run was the one I'd most been looking forward to and was actually a little dismayed that it didn't seem that it would be taking place in a more remote area.

About a quarter mile into the run, I turned a corner and saw two rather steep but short hills up ahead. I slowed to a walk during these unexpected inclines and, determined to make up for the time, I decided not to stop again until the end of this leg. If you know how I train and how I've run both of my half marathons, I follow a running with walk breaks plan. I will run a mile then walk for a tenth of a mile, then run a mile, then walk for a tenth of a mile, etc.

So I brought my running pace down about 30 seconds per mile and kept going and going and going. My course went onto a bike path alongside a freeway and I enjoyed coasting a bit of downhill before I left the path into a residential area. There were a couple of runners gaining on me and I was just focusing on maintaining a pace that would get me to the end without my usual walk breaks when I heard a rustling to my right.

When I brought my head up I was stunned by the sight of at least two dozen horses, some white and others black or brown grazing in a pasture on the other side of a chainlink fence. They had to have been no more than 8 feet from where I ran past. They kept on eating and payed no mind to the wild woman running out of nowhere, past them and off down the street.

I don't know how to explain it other than to say seeing that many horses so suddenly, under the full moonlight, while running at night in a place I'd never even heard of was... surreal, to say the least, and emotional and breathtaking! I wished I'd taken my camera for the night leg!

About a mile beyond that a bike path took me most of the remainder of my leg, along a few wooden bridges over small waterways and the smell of the ocean was invigorating and helped me focus on getting to the end of my run...

Right past the 4.9 miles on my iPod which is when my Leg should have been over. I went on and it wasn't until it read 5.6 miles that I could see texasbuckeye waiting for me at the baton exchange in Sausalito. Again, I did my little mawz-sprint (which I imagine is probably only about a 9 minute mile) to the end! But just the joy of having set my mind to finishing without walking and being able to do it, was enough for me!


My first leg description can be found here: http://waitingforruns.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-first-leggggggg.html