Into the Night

I wasn't planning on running tonight since I was still tired from going to the Indians game last night (great game by the way) ... That was until I decided to give Mike a call to see what he's been up to. After talking for a bit he told me that he was going to go out for a night run in his neighborhood around midnight. This caught my interest right away and I asked him if he would be willing to drive over to the Happy Days Visitor Center for a night trail run on the Burning River course. He said sure, and then out the door I went to meet up with him. Usually I wouldn't think about meeting for a trail run after 11:30 during the work week, but I have been needing a good night trail run lately and couldn't pass up the opportunity to enjoy it with a friend.

It was extremely muggy tonight and fog was already starting to form, as shown in this picture looking into the Visitor Center cemetary... kind of creepy eh?

As we began our run, we reached a point on the trail where you have to turn right and head into a long corridor filled with giant boulders. This area is about 65 miles or so into the Burning River 100 Miler with participants passing through this rocky section in the middle of the night. Definitely a difficult task...

Further down the trail we then came to the Ice Box Cave, or in tonight's case... The Bat Cave! This was because as Mike started to head into the cave to check out things, multiple bats started to race past him. They were flying so low that I thought we were going to get hit with one.

Listen to this Jack Nicholson audio clip for the full effect

As we continued on towards the overlook and ledges, I was able to spot a couple of deer lying in a large grass field. As we walked towards them I took this photo of them and their glowing eyes... Always a neat thing to see at night...

We both felt great on the run tonight and seemed to just cruise along, paying more attention to the rocks and roots than how much we were sweating. As we neared the Octagon Trail my GPS watch showed 2.5 miles so we turned around and finished with 5 miles, although I think we ended up doing more than that. Hard to be precise with all the tree cover this time of the year.