Started at 9PM, wore a huge reflective triangle, 200 lumen headlamp, flashing red LED blinker, reflective ankle strips, and reflective gloves, so I was basically a moving traffic barrel. Down Beck Street to Downtown. Hit the 5 mile split in :36, felt absurdly easy, which is a good sign, and I had been running quite a bit out of my way to avoid black ice (slipped and slammed about 3 minutes in), so it was even slightly long for the split, probably by a minute or so. Kept going, hit downtown, looped around and came back up Main. Followed Main up Columbus and then all the way up the hill and onto the trail that connects to the upper neighborhood. Planned to go up and over the radio towers, but quickly realized that was a terrible idea due to snow, so I figured I would stick on the trail into the mine and pop down a mining road. Getting in there, I realized that wasn't happening. Snow was way too deep, could barely run and I was losing time like crazy. Also, I got about a quarter mile away from a spot where I suddenly recalled seeing a super ominous cave with bones outside of it a summer or two ago, so my animal instincts kicked in and I high-tailed it back off the trail and up to the nearest road (gated community at the top of Capital Hill). Ran back down the hill, down to 300 W (instead of taking Victory Road, which is insanely dumb to run on at night), then came back up Beck. Total time of 2:26. Figured I averaged about 7:00 pace on the road (last 5 mile split was :34 and it still felt really easy), but I lost about 15 minutes off my pace in the snow on the trail (it was packed in for maybe 2/3 of the way, but still bad footing and slow and horrible for the other 1/3 to the point that I was probably going 11 minute pace for a mile or two in there). Not the most inspired run ever, mostly due to being pretty tired the whole time (long run starting at 9PM is stupid...), but I'm glad that I got it in as I'll be skiing for most of tomorrow and there's no way I'm putting in 20 miles afterwards. | 