My first run at night with a head lamp

Tonight was my first run with a headlamp. Normally, I run right after work. Tonight, however, I had an electrician at the house and by the time he left I was hungry and had dinner. I did not get out the door until after 9 o’clock, when it is very dark in my neighborhood. Last time I did a night run I forgot to wear it, so tonight was my first night run with my new headlamp that I bought a few months back.

It is an interesting experience, and is a lot different than just running in the dark. I had a migraine during the run, so I am not sure how much of what can be attributed to having no vision in my left eye and how much was attributed to having a roaming flashlight on the road in front of me as I went along.

I noticed that my sense of pace was pretty much spot on tonight, which usually is not the case at night. Most of the time, running at night makes you feel as though you are running faster than you really are because you do not have as many frames of reference and can not as easily see what is coming up ahead of you. Everything seems to suddenly appear out of nowhere when it is dark or when there is minimal light. Having the road lit ahead of me, my pace felt about the same as it would for the effort as it does in the daytime.

I also noticed that it was very easy to read street signs. All I had to do was look up at them, and they were illuminated. That will be handy if I decide to run somewhere that I am not 100% familiar with.

One thing that I did not like about it was that the light reflected off all the moisture in the air and the dust floating in the air in front of my face. It was a little disconcerting if my head was pointed towards the ground but I was looking up with my eyes and looking through the beam of light.

I will definately give the head lamp another use or two to see if it is really worth using. I am sure that it makes me much more visible to traffic, so it will at least make me more comfortable to go out on dark mornings when the sun can play tricks on a drivers eyes before it actually rises.