Night running / LED Lenser review

The RAT was the first time I'd raced in the dark. And I've done very little running in the dark full stop. This made me a bit nervous going into the race but there wasn't a huge amount I could do about it given that the race was in August - training in the dark would have meant missing out on sleep and I decided that sleep (and so not risking getting sick) was more important.

As a member of the Trail Running Team I was lucky enough to be given a LED Lenser head torch. And I'd had the chance to practise using it when we were out in the Alps in June. I was really pleased about this as it meant I knew what I could expect from the torch and that definitely gave me confidence. In the Alps, I had felt comfortable running up and down technical Alpine trails. And so I was fairly certain I'd be ok on the Cornish coastal footpath.

I was more nervous about navigating in the dark. Whilst the race was on a well-marked long distance trail, my experience (e.g. Our trip to the Isle of Wight) has taught me that this doesn't always mean you can get away without knowing the route. We bought a map and spent the days before the race recce-ing the tricky bits - mainly when the route passed through villages. This wasn't the best option but it had to do as we couldn't head all the way to Cornwall twice and we couldn't run the whole 50k (it was a there-and-back route so that would be sufficient for recognising the whole 100k route) in the days running up to the race when we needed to be resting.

So when I stood on the start line at midnight I felt pretty  comfortable with what lay ahead.

The LED Lenser head torch was really impressive. It lit up the path brilliantly and I felt I could run in pretty much the same way as during daylight. In reality, I probably wasn't quite as fast but that's not exactly a bad thing at the beginning of a 100k race! About 30 mins in I realised that the torch was a bit tight and was pressing on my head. But I was able to adjust the strap while it was on my head and I kept on moving while I did this. It was easy to change the direction of the beam (helpful on steep downhills or uphills) and its brightness.

My one problem was my batteries running out. But this was my fault - I hadn't put in new batteries for the race and dawn was about 2 hours later than I'd expected. So the torch lasted 6 hours on not-new batteries - I don't reckon that's a bad statistic. And it had a helpful red warning light that flashed when the battery was low. Given it was almost light I didn't change my batteries. Once the batteries were low, the torch would switch itself off to preserve the battery that was left.  I could see enough to run most of the time and I was then able to switch it back on for the bits where I needed a bit of extra light.

And what about getting lost? There were a few parts where I went marginally off course or went round the perimeter of a field when I could have taken a direct route across the middle to the next stile / gate. In fact the only point where I got lost to the point that it bothered me was after dawn!

In terms of running in the dark, I now feel much less scared about this aspect of longer races. In an ideal world I'd still want to recce the night time bit of the course in advance. But a section of night time running is definitely not something to put me off a race anymore.