Running on the regs, running on a good schedule, shorts during the week, long on the weekend – it feels good. I did a bit more than a 10K last night, late, during some steady snowfall. We got a couple of inches, about five centimeters. It was just freezing. In the higher elevation it was tricky going, the snow a bit deeper. Some of the roads were wet, some were snowed, some were snowed over ice. It depended on how much wind was blowing. I ran through a couple of neighborhoods tonight, wary of the traffic sliding around. Plows were out, but the bars were full.
The Garmin couldn’t get signal. I ran down a hill from the house, crossed the river and ran West Brownsville under sodium lamps out and back, crossed back over, hit a hill and climbed 250 feet to a village called Hiller. That’s where Captain Obvious lives. The snow cover gave everything a bright spectral glow. The streetlights up in Hiller are halide, which is a sort of less annoying flourescent. As opposed to sodium lights, which give everything a 1970s washed out sepia creep, the halide lights are energy efficient and make the colors pop. When I’m running in a snowstorm, I can’t get my full spectrum freak on unless my colors are popping.
This is a scene lit with halide:
And this is one lit with sodium lamps:
As you can see, the halide use a lot less power and keep things sufficiently illuminated.
Here’s a shot using my camera’s night filter. Looks hellish:
After running Hiller I headed back home. I had a gel and water I could have tapped if I needed it, but I decided to call it day, opting for another good hour’s run on Saturday in preparation for another 18 miler on Sunday morning before the hella snowstorm rolled in. We’re expecting 4-6 inches, but there’s no way of knowing. This valley is right at the crossroads of three fronts, usually, and the temperatures in the next town west of here in the next hollow can vary by as much as 5 degrees, usually warmer. I wore gloves, hat, shorts, long sleeve shirt, short sleeve shirt, trail shoes.
Pennsylvania is granulated into little neighborhoods called villages or “patches”, the colloquial term. A four by four block area can qualify as a village. In Georgia, they’re called neighborhoods.
Example: “I thought yinz lived in that patch up ‘ere on the hill past the fire hall.”
I really miss running trails, rail trails especially. We’re moving to an area this summer much closer to the Allegheny Trail, which stretches from Pittsburgh to Washington DC, an old converted railroad. Crushed limestone, riverside, woodsy, restrooms, awesome maintenance/recreation clubs.
Fifty State Banana 
I lived in Brownsville, High Street hill, as a small child… as an adult, I’ve run the neighborhoods from West Brownsville, where my grandfather docked his boat… always (hilly) runs that fueled my imagination- sweet and sour treats of another era. More often than not I ended those miles by kicking against some competitive ghost (fear of the hecklers off Water Street…. seriously, I couldn’t go there and not be chased by a gnarly broken-chained dog, or a pack of preteen children)
On Jan. 1 I registered for the HS 40 and immediately started scouring those damn internets for blogs, race reports, etc… you know, run research… found this blog… was totally weirded out that of all the pertinent HS blog entries, yours was the best read and THEN saw you were a Brownsville, PA resident. The smallness of everything always gets me….
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That’s amazing, Angela. I’m really excited for you running HS 40. It’s really special to me. I’m going running tonight, training, of course, always training. I’m running my 5th HS 40 this is year, shooting for a sub 9 hr exodus. The club, the runners, totally amazing people along the way. WVMTR is a good bunch. Hope you have fun, and thanks for sharing your passion for running.
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