I rounded off training this week with a moonlight run on Otley Chevin expertly organised by Nikos. We parked up at the Shawfield Plantation car park and met with between twenty and thirty other runners and organisers. The run was two laps and pretty straightforward with minimal turns. The “supermoon” wasn’t obvious at the start as we were in the trees with only small patches of ground lit up by our headtorches. Running in the dark is strangely discumbobulating – had no real idea of pace, just tried to hang onto the runner ahead. So, maybe not that different from running in the daylight then.
As we took the first right turn and ran up into a clearing it was breathtaking, and not just because of the steepness of the slope either. How can I have lived for 54 years and not known that the orbit of the moon is not circular? This weekend the moon is closer to Earth than that it has been in more than 18 years and the biggest full moon of 2011 will occur on Saturday. Not sure why I can’t remember those big moons of eighteen years ago – oh yes, tortured by broken sleep patterns, smelly nappies and Barney, that might explain it. I’ve learnt a new word too – “perigree”; the point in its orbit that the moon is closest to Earth.
Personally, I felt comforted by the presence of a big fat moon in the sky and the light it shone on my path. No bad moon rising or worries of anything ill met by moonlight here, but not so when we got back into the trees again. The downhill section was decidedly tricky and taken very cautiously by me.
I hope that any obstacles in the way of this becoming a regular parkrun can be cleared as it certainly provides something different from city parks. I could probably trundle along a bit faster in daylight too. Nikos mentioned a possible midnight run, which sounds like a fine idea. Let’s swim to the moon, let’s climb through the tide …..
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