Full Moon Run

I really couldn’t sleep Saturday night. I finally feel asleep around 12:30am after sucking on an Ambien, but I woke up again at around 3:30am. So I went downstairs and had a bowl of cereal and decided that I may as well go for a run. My moving around woke up my wife so I told her my plans of going outside for a run. She thought I was insane and didn’t want me to go outside for fear that something would happen to me. I told her to make me a better offer than a middle of the night run. She offered up our basement treadmill as a viable alternative; that was not the offer I was hoping to hear so my middle of the night outdoor run became even more appealing. I wasn’t sure where I was going to run. I thought maybe I’d stick to the sidewalks so at least I could be seen from the streets. I ran down to Grand Army Plaza and stopped to take a photo and make an Utterz to memorialize this event. I decided from there to go into Prospect Park. I’ve never had trouble at this time of night and figured I’d be better able to see someone coming from afar. It would be more deserted, but I felt safer inside the park. I think I enjoyed this run more than any other run so far this year. I love the feeling of being outdoors in the middle of a January winter’s night, with the wind howling, leaves rustling and strange sounds emanating from everywhere. I felt like I was walking on the moon. It doesn’t matter how slowly or fast I run when I achieve this sort of feeling. I just love being outside with the world seemingly all to myself. The only company I had for the hour and ten minutes I was outside were rustling leaves and a solitary rat. Normally when I am outdoors at times like this, I have music pumping into my ears. Unfortunately, the battery on my Ipod Shuffle decided to die soon once I entered the park. I normally like to seal off my senses from as much of the environment as possible to complete that spaceman on the moon feeling, but with the battery dead, I entertained myself to the sounds of the world instead. It at times got a little creepy. I would suddenly hear something rustling right next to me and I would get a start that it was some nefarious person out to do me harm. You hear so many different sounds at night when the world is still; sounds that are masked during the day. My running felt very sublime. I was tired, but awake, running, but moving slow and I felt completely at peace with the world. Doing this run on so little sleep was a big confidence booster that I will be able to make it through the night at the VT100. I think I could have run all night long, but I knew I needed to get back home and try to get some sleep before the day began. I wanted to be awake to watch the football games later on TV. I settled on doing just 6 miles. I let my course through the park meander a bit and I exited at a place that I don’t normally exit and enter the park. Doing so was divine providence. I had a clear view down a long street with the most fantastic full moon I’ve ever seen in my life. The moon was at the extreme western edge of the horizon and the sun which was still well below the eastern horizon was shining on it with a brilliant orange glow. It was the biggest full moon disk I’ve ever seen and I stopped me in my tracks. I stood in the middle of the road and stared in awe at this fiery looking orb for about 10 minutes. I am lucky the police didn’t come by or I would have been carted off to Bellevue Hospital. I tried in vain to get a good picture of it with my camera phone, but the street lamps would sort have wash out the effect of the moon. I felt like going into my house and waking everyone up so they could see it – for some reason though I didn’t think my wife would be amenable to getting up for that considering our earlier conversation. So after completely cooling off while staring at the moon, I finally went inside, grabbed a quick bite and then iced down my shins. My house was very cold and between cooling down and icing; I became completely chilled to the bone. Fortunately, my wife was nice and warm when I got into bed. Heh hee.