The SoCal Night

At the meet at UC Irvine today, the 800/1500 runners weren't supposed to run, because last week was the Occidental Distance Carnival (aka only distance), and this week everyone else ran and the over-distance guys ran their off-events on the shorter side. But, because most of the 8 guys couldn't scratch a fast enough 400 to get into the meet outright, we were relegated to watching it.

It was a fun meet, with some nation-leading marks in DI, including a 1:48.mid 800 by a Lopez Lomong Look-A-Like and an 8:49 steeple (with several more great marks in that event) by some BYU studs.

Our B-relay 4x400m fell through so instead of scrapping it, I offered to run it. Split a 52.9/53.0 (depending on who you ask), which I'm not upset about, considering I was eating shit-all and not moving through out the meet.

But I digress - the main point for this post is about what happened after the meet. See, the 800/1500 guys who weren't running were supposed to do a workout of 6x400, which I couldn't get in until we got back, at around 8pm. By this time, it was pretty dark out, and I had no way to access the Trackside lights.

No worries, it's Southern California! It's still North of 65 degrees outside. I laced up my Nike Luna's and started jogging around.

There's something every distance runner loves about running at night. You just....feel FASTER. As the crickets chirped I danced around the track, light and soft, at 62 second pace per lap. I was planning on doing 60's, but that 4x4 leg took more out of me than I would like to admit.

The one light on the track resonated from above the bathroom, and cast an eerie shadow along the 350m mark on the back bend. As I passed this light every time I would check my shadow, build up, and hammer off of the final turn. Every step bringing me deep, deep into the dark.

As I finished the final rep, I went to take my flats off and sat down on the infield, listening. The silence of the warm night was cut only by my thoughts of how great a place SoCal is to train in the winter/spring...my thoughts wandering to workouts of old in the Seattle, trying to hammer out intervals in the hail or sleet day in and day out.

As I sat, my eyes wandered around and I caught a glimpse of a Firefly. Just once, real quick, but it was definitely there. The first Firefly of spring, dancing along the breeze on this warm, SoCal night. Just me and him, exploring it.