W&OD Trail In The Dark

First of all, my chest congestion is better - not 100%, but thanks to Mucinex and VapoRub I was able to sleep last night.

Except for the fact that I woke up at 4:45am. At that point, Sherry was no longer in bed - it ends up that the boys (who are both battling coughs of their own) had both woken up, so Sherry was busy getting them back down. I'm not sure how I didn't hear them...I guess I was in a nice deep sleep at least for some part of the night.

My original plan was to wake up at 5:45am, get in my running clothes and drive to Reston, VA to run there and shower at the gym. I have meetings all day with my Director who is in town, so I had to be in Virginia in the morning. My thought was to leave early and beat the traffic.

Lying in bed at 4:45am, I knew I would not get back to sleep. So I made the decision to just get out of bed and move the schedule up an hour. This way I'd get a good hour and a half of work in (I love free WiFi at Panera!) before picking up my boss.

I left the house at 5:15am and got to Reston by 5:45am. No traffic whatsoever! Hooray! Except it was still dark when I arrived.

I had a decision to make - run outside on the W&OD Trail in the dark or run inside on the treadmill. Given that I still had some congestion, I decided it would be to everyone's benefit if I stayed outside (this was validated a few times during my run...don't worry - I won't share the gory details).

I normally enter the W&OD trail at mile marker 17.5 by cutting through a field and down a hill on a pseudo-path through high grass. Since it was dark, I knew that was not the best way to go. So I used the sidewalk and went to the next biggest intersection and entered the W&OD trail via a street entrance. I started running at mile marker 18.0 and decided to go up 1.5 miles and return 1.5 miles.

It was nice to get running again - even it was just for 3 miles. I couldn't see my HRM watch in the dark, so I ended up with my heart rate a bit higher than it should on an easy run (155 avg), however, I'm still a bit under the weather and my body isn't 100%.

Three early miles in the dark - and now I'm ready to tackle the day!!!