Night trail half marathon.....blessed night

      I am wired up tonight. I just ran the Planet Adventure Nighttime Half Marathon out at Eagle Creek. The race didn't even start until 6pm. I was wired up all day for this. I started having my clothes panic as early as 11am. Dang it how fast am I gonna run in the dark? How cold should I start out so that I can be comfy when I am running? Um...what clothes to bring to change into afterwards? What shoes to wear? My trail shoes which are still rather new to me or my good ol' Mizunos. I even texted a picture to Christy saying "too much? okay? whattya think?" I ended up choosing my little "body armor" shirt under my purple running hoodie with the fleece inside, two long sleeves shirts and my light windbreaker. Then my heavy tights, my purple ear cover, two pairs of gloves, my toe socks with other socks on top of them and my mizunos. Oh yeah and my hydration pack which I weighed and measured and decided to take as I could also use the extra pockets for all my inevitable little things I felt i needed (which I ended up really using).
    Christy took a picture of me in all my gear and posted it on Facebook saying I was going to either scale Everest or run a trail half. HA HA!! That's okay...i can laugh at myself! You know what they say...angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
    So the time had come to be off. We donned our headlamps, turned them on and started running. Of course at the beginning is the inevitable one track backlog but then we started spreading out fairly quickly. The quarter marathoners had already gone before us so we didn't have to worry about tons of fasties racing by us. I actually was pleasantly surprised at how much of the trail I remembered!! I would say oh yeah here is that bridge and then this little hill and then there is the fence and that building and that big tree. So that really helped! And then the gravely part which we HATE HATE HATE was all covered up with snow which was lovely and helped with traction and to soften up the gravel. Plus....full moon. What could be better??
   At one point I just turned off my headlamp and ran by the light of the moon. It was so bright and I was at that wide open space in between the waters and it was cool to run "naked" of some of my technology. I met a girl who this was her first half marathon ever and i told her this had been my first half marathon too! We passed each other back and forth a bit. And it was so quiet. For there being several hundred runners out in those woods you wouldn't have known it. Everyone was so respectful of the trails that there were no loud hooting, hollering madness to deal with. Just bobbing headlamps, soft "on your left" and "good job" and such. And a bit of conversation here and there. VERY NICE NIGHT. And the t-shirt glows in the dark and the medal too.