My belly started getting frost-bitten so I had to remove my glove and hold my hand over my belly towards the end. I also had a pretty nippy face too until I warmed up around kilometer 3.
I was joined by a giant husky for most of my run. He kept getting in my way because the trail is so narrow. He would run past me, then stop. When he first joined me, he began nipping at and biting at my legs. I had to stop and become the dominant dog. I had to train him to stop by saying “no” and holding my hand over his head in the dominant training sort of way. After that, he was fine and just ran beside me. He is without a doubt the largest husky-type dog I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of them back when I was toying around with sled dog racing as a spectator. His shoulders just about stood as high as my waist and he was 100% pure muscle. Definitely, this is not a dog I would pick a fight with.
The husky and I ran on in an eerie silence. I thought I would lose him in the 5 km of trails. I did one loop through 2.5 km of trail from the sanctuary parking lot to another road exit, then I turned around and went back over the same trail the way I came back to the parking lot. After I reached the parking lot again, it would be another 4.5 km back home over the country roads. But the dog stayed with me all the way home and up onto my deck. I went in and I assume he went on his way.
The second half of my trail loop began when it started to get dark. The full moon, crowned by the fiery red planet Mars was so bright in the glassy, darkening sky that it threw sharp shadows. Mars was about 9 degrees to the upper right of the moon. Nine degrees is about the width of a human fist when the arm is extended fully. Anyway, it was very spooky following my own shadow in the dark with a totally silent giant husky padding beside me. The only sound was the crunch of the snow.
My pace suffered because I did stop to take a few pictures. The dog distracted me and caused me to stop more than a few times. I did the 14 km in about 2:07 which is a 9:04 or so pace. My pictures did not turn out because it was only a cell phone camera and it was dark. But just imagine a brilliantly full moon, lots of stars, an arctic wasteland, and the crunch of Yaktrax on an excruciatingly frozen snow pak and you’ll get the idea. It was so frozen that my Yaktrax slid around on the wood of the boardwalk portion of the trails. I guess my Yaktrax have lost some of their bite after 400 km.
I am glad I forced myself to run because I have been feeling extremely stressed out for the last four days for unknown reasons. I have been stressed out to near panic levels, being unable to sleep well, my mind racing along uncontrollably, and so on. The primary emotions during these times are irrational fear and undirected anger. I know how to deal with it though, so I did. It is quite difficult to meditate myself back to some sort of normalcy, but thanks to my years of training I did succeed. It just required an attitude adjustment. Fortunately this kind of thing is extremely rare and each time I deal successfully with it, it becomes even rarer.
It’s all good now.