Night Running

I love running at night - being a guy and living in a relatively save area I have little concern over being hurt. Now I don't encourage others to run in the dark especially in areas that aren't considered safe but if you have the opportunity I would highly recommend it.

My night running consists of concrete trails with little or no foot traffic, no streets, good lighting, and a good neighborhood. Why do I run at night? basically it's because of my schedule. I get up for work sometime before 5:00 am and get home around 4:00 pm. During lunch sometimes I squeeze in a 30 mins walk (we have 30 min lunches). Once I'm home I like to spend time with the family - my wife Beth is usually frazzled by this time with the little ones and is trying to cook dinner so I'll attempt to distract them long enough for dinner to happen. After dinner, I'll help Abby with her homework (2nd grade) and then lately we've been going out for a family walk of about a mile before it gets dark. Back home it's time to get ready for bed, then the kids are put down by 8:00 pm. So naturally I'll go running sometime after 8:00 pm. :)

Now don't get me wrong - over weekends I'll throw in some morning and afternoon runs, but I'd say about 90% of my runs are logged in the evenings. I find that it's a good time to go out (Beth gets some 'bath' time to herself) and I can get centered and relaxed during my run.

The next thing I will say is that I LOVE my iPod. All the hard-core runners out there are going to kill me, but this is the greatest invention made in the past 20 years for runners. I can't tell you how many times in the old days I would go out first with a walkman (battery issues), then a CD player (battery plus skipping issues). I would say to myself "Why can't they come up with something you can put different songs on? Something like a tape player where you can record different artists? I'm really getting tired of listening to the same 12 tracks of Whitesnake every time I go out for a run...." Now the purist out there will say that I shouldn't "block out" the world around me when I run - hey sometimes I run without my iPod, but I really like listening to my 400+ songs I have loaded on it.

Keep Steppin'

bob