Night time running / december thoughts

This week I only ran four days what with that whole christmas thing. Having to travel further for christmas visiting made me feel much less inclined to spend time running instead of visiting. But with four runs, I still managed to get 13 hours of running in. Thursday I had a nice easy run after work, nice clear sky with an almost full moon shining off the snow that fell earlier in the day; it left me wanting to run again at night and the weather forecast had predicted similar weather for friday night. So friday after work, and a quick dinner, I headed out for a long run. I ran 4.5 hours starting at 6:30 pm. Except the weather was not as I'd hoped. 4.5 hours of heavy wet snow fall, with totally not clear skies. And I had run to a park that was close to the city, so it wasn't exactly the feeling of wilderness at night I had envisioned. The heavy light from the truck scales, other highway lights, oil tanker flood lights, pulp mill flood lights, and lights from the prison were constabtly present. It actually felt brighter running at night with all the lights, than it does running in the day, a weird red haze hung over the night. There was some trails in the park that were nicely packed, so of course I strayed from those rather quickly and spent the bulk of the run breaking fresh tracks in about a foot of snow most of the way, and hitting some steep climbs. By halfway through the run, I was beat, such a tough run. So glad I did it, I think I'll make friday night after work exhausted long runs a little more of a habit; except maybe I'll be more selective of my scenery and not run in my least favourite park just because of wanting to stick to familiar trails.
Saturday, I ran an easy two hours. And then sunday ran 5.25 hours in Kal park. this time in kal park we explored more of the high rim trail. It was super fun, yeah there was heavy snow, but the trail as enough tree cover in most spots that it was manageable. I felt real tough around hour four,  think the speed of our descent of the downhills and banging out 4:30 min km's in the snow prob led to that, but I'm happy that after 13 hours in 4 days, I feel good at the end of it.

Month	Run Km	Run hrs	elevgain (km)
Jan	322.00	32.84	9.42
Feb	342.74	35.68	7.23
Mar	261.67	29.25	6.73
Apr	394.06	43.35	8.58
May	240.14	30.38	6.92
Jun	326.94	39.50	11.28
Jul	310.25	42.63	10.82
Aug	174.20	35.60	7.45
Sep	140.09	15.50	4.07
Oct	192.94	19.75	6.07
Nov	285.29	31.37	8.46
Dec	336.65	42.88	11.42

In december I ran the second most hours in a month for the year, and the most elevation gain per month in the year. And I took a whole week off. I feel like I'm doing good sticking to my training plan. If I end up registering for the planned race in march, I think I'm doing good to set myself up for success there.