After more than several weeks away from it, I resumed running this morning with the Shoreline Shufflers at Norah Head. This little running group meet several times a week, but I only ever join them on Tuesday mornings for a 7km run behind the dunes and along the beach before heading down past Norah Head Lighthouse and back to Cabbage Tree Bay.
Most people do a shorter 5km run, and as I don’t like finishing 10 or 20 minutes behind them all I took off ten minutes early. This means that as my run started at 5:50am and as the sun does not rise until a couple of minutes before 7:00am at this time of year, I basically commenced my run in blackness that was only illuminated by a full moon.
Fortunately, I had recently gone into Anaconda and purchased a headlamp – one of those cute little lights that is attached to a headband so you can cast a light onto the track in front of you without having to hold a torch. I had looked at a few, but settled on a Princeton Tec Fuel as this model had the lowest profile and I thought something bigger flopping around on my forehead would annoy me somewhat.
When I first set out, the headlamp lurking in my peripheral vision above my nose was rather distracting, along with the fine seaspray being illuminated in a beam in front of my face. But the most noticable thing was when I hit the bush and ran through a few bowl-like sections that always seem to trap the cooler night air. As I puffed and panted my way through, the headlamp lit up each exhalation so I had this nice illuminated cloud in front of my face every time I breathed out.
I also noticed that there were dozens of reflections beside the track on the ground – little multicoloured twinkles here and there. At first I thought they were just reflections off little beads of water from the recent rains, but then I noticed that one was coming from a little frog sitting in the sand beside the path. I thought that perhaps they were all frogs, but as I slowed to have a look at another I saw it was a crab or spider scuttling away. Needless to say I made sure I didn’t clump my big fat foot down on any little twinkles, as it’s rude enough to awaken all the wildlife when stumbling through much less squish them!
By the time I got to Soldiers Beach I was pretty used to it, and the only thing that I kept noticing was the line on the ground where the light finished, which as it kept a constant position to whichever way my head was facing kept making me think I was wearing clear, frameless sunglasses and I was noticing the bottom of the lens.
Getting towards the end of the beach section and Mr Sun was casting his predawn glow over the horizon and I probably could have turned the light off and put it in my pocket, but as the last section of the run is through a walking track through the bush I kept it there for the duration.
So in conclusion, the Princeton Tec Fuel headlamp is pretty good for night running. It lights up the darkest bush track adequately to ensure you can see where you are going, and is still small enough so that it’s only a slight distraction that you soon forget about. Admittedly, my run was over 5 minutes slower than last time I headed out and I do so wish I could blame the night conditions of this run, but I have a sneaking suspicion it may have more to do with the additional 3-4kg of belly I’m lugging around right now!
Maybe it’s time to book in to do some Pilates in Newcastle?
