Running in moonlight

Well, I didn’t get stepped on by a cow or abducted by aliens, so I’m back after running the E.T. Full Moon Midnight (1/2) Marathon Saturday night/Sunday morning. I really liked the race, and I’ll do it again next year.

I decided to pay $25 for the bus trip out to Rachel, which was a great idea, since I didn’t have to worry about finding the place and, in theory, would be able to sleep on the way back. We started running the 1/2 marathon at 12:20, and it was a truly surreal experience. For a while, I was with a big pack of people with headlamps, but when I broke away from them and looked back, it was a bit freaky: imagine yourself running down a desert road in the middle of the night, seeing a bunch of people with headlamps chasing you. Very sci-fi.

Even when I was by myself (which was pretty much everything after mile 7 or so), I didn’t need a flashlight because the moon was so bright.

I can’t really verbalize what it felt like running by moonlight, in the middle of a desert…probably the best way is that it’s closest I’ll ever get to running on Mars (yes, I know there’s no air on Mars). So even though we didn’t see any aliens, it really felt extra-terrestrial.

The course was uphill for the first seven miles or so, which was a little more than I expected, and I definitely felt the altitude (it’s around 5000 feet). But this was a really fun race, and quite a novel experience for me. If I lived out in the desert, I’d do a lot more running at night. Schedule permitting, I’ll run this one again next year.