Tuesday, January 1, 2013

New Year Greetings!

First day of the year. First run of the year.

It was a total washout yesterday, as the rain stormed down the entire day, non-stop. I thought the trails would be a mud pool today, but it was surprisingly clean and dry. Cleaner than the previous days that I ran. The rain must have washed away all the top layers of loose sand, mud and accumulated slosh. How apt, to start the run on a (quite literally) clean slate too!

The weather alternated between sunshine, overcast and drizzle. I managed about 32-33km, two loops of MR and back home. Along the way, I ran past 3 monitor lizards (in sizes S, M, L), 2 skinks (eeeiu...), and 1 yellow-green pencil thin snake, which slithered away to the side as I approached and continued looking out for edible prey. I suppose the rain yesterday must have thwarted their plans and it was a good day to be out for some sun-tanning and food.

I also bumped into a couple of familiar trail-ultra faces. Good to see like-minded folks, lost in our own contemplative solo runs. It was that sort of "Hi, happy new year" moments, running past one another, perfectly understanding why the other runner was also out in the trail.

Strangely, my stopwatch clocked about 4-ish hours for the run, but my watch was about 5h since I left the house. I must have mysteriously lost 30min at pit-stops...! Anyhow, by the time I got home, I was quite a shade darker, courtesy of the random sun.

Great to start off the year with a run, and looking forward to more good long runs.


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