At the end of the peak, a bald eagle...

Yesterday's run was the last of my very long training runs. It lasted 5 hours and 14 minutes and it was one of the best runs in all of my training. I went up to my long time friend Matt's summer house in the Catskills for his 40th birthday. The house is gorgeous. It sits on the Delaware River. Matt cooked ribs and sausage on the grille. We roasted marsh-mellos on the fire and made s'mores. the stars and moon came out and my 2 year old daughter, Emily, ran out on the yard and started jumping up in the air "catching the stars". She would catch a start and then run it over to one of us standing in the yard watching. It was the best. I woke up at 4:50am without an alarm and set out on the pitch black road. Luckily Matt had a head lantern that I wore which I honestly don't know how I would have managed without because there was NO light on the road. I took two steps on the road and came face to face with a skunk who was just sitting on the side of the road. It's 2 eyes glowed by the dim light of my lantern which freaked me out at first and then I made out its form in the dark. I just ran right by it and it didn't seem to care much about me. Then I kept on going in the dark. The light of my head-lantern was the only light source except for the occasional house light that went by. And there were points that were just plain creepy. Like I heard something howling. I thought to myself, "There is something howling..." I just kept going. And there were all these abandoned barns that just looked like something out of the Blair Witch Project the way they very faintly would appear as my light flickered against them. It didn't start to get light out until about 6. So that hour was interesting because of all of the "goings on" in the darkness... I didn't listen to music because I wanted to keep my wits about me. Between 6:00 and 7:00 I ran the same route that I ran from 5:00 to 6:00. The sun was coming up and I got to see all of the forms that were creeping me out in the pitch black. That was interesting. I also saw that there were parts where I was running on the river's ridge that was surprisingly high above the water. From 7:00 to 8:00 I ran into the woods on a dirt road that Matt said would take me 5 and a half miles to the next main road and then I could turn back. I headed down the road, took a wrong turn and ended up at a dead end at about 40 minutes in. So I turned around and headed back. There were parts of this run where the scenery was just beautiful. At one point I came out of the woods into this massive field of overgrown grass that was surrounded by the woods. I felt like I'd found a whole new part of the world. And the fact that I was running on dirt made my legs grateful... its just a lot less pounding on the body than the pavement. By 8:00 I was back at Matt's and he'd asked me to swing by at 8:00 because he may want to run some with me. I had 2 more hours to go and was wondering if he'd be able to do 2 hours of running. He did exactly that which was pleasantly surprising and it just made the end of the run fantastic. We ran somewhere between 11 and 12 miles and just talked most of the way which kept my mind off the fact that I was running somewhere in the last 10 miles out of 50 for the weekend. The weather was perfect for running and to end it all we saw a bald eagle right at the end of the run just about 500 feet from Matt's driveway. It was perched in a tree high above the water but that we were at eye-level with because of the ridge that the road was on. I'm going to try and be somewhat poetic here and take that eagle as a good omen... such a powerful animal that has, to this day survived extinction. It was enormous. It was the first time I'd ever seen one just living in the wild. Just awesome. I felt great (only a little sore). It was a great run.