I wanted to get some practice at running at night so I signed up for Cap'n Karl's All Nighter, a 6/12 hour race that starts at 7 pm. My wife, mother and two kids and I got a lodge at Canyon of the Eagles, about a 40 minute drive from the race site, for some rest and relaxation for the weekend. On race day around 5 pm my wife dropped me off with a box full of shoes, and some clothing, lots of socks, Vaseline, tape, waist pack and headlamp. And some pasta primavera from the lodge's kitchens. I ate my pasta and changed into my running clothing in the pit toilet at the primitive camping area where the race site was. Because of the extensive rains, the race course was changed from a 6.2 mile loop to a 5 mile loop in a pinched figure eight -- there was about a mile that was run in both directions with loops at the far ends, so you would be passing the other runners regularly. After seeing a little of the course and looking at the finish times from last year I decided to change from the 6 hour to the 12 hour so I could get in more than a marathon. Despite threatened rain it was just partly cloudy and humid on race day and evening and night. The race began at 7:02 on the RD's watch. The first loop I took slowly, with regular walk breaks dictated by my watch and by the terrain. There was a good bit of water and mud, but it was mostly avoidable as long as you could see. After dark this was a real problem though. The first loop took me 1:10, which was 5 minutes faster than my hoped- for average pace. Since I knew I would slow down after dark this felt just right. The next loop, I was not stuck behind quite so many people and I think it took me more like 1:05. At that point it was dark and I had just started using my lamp for illumination. I stopped to change socks as mine had finally gotten very wet, and were covered in granite dust from the trail. Very sandy. Now that it was dark I did not feel safe running most of the trail. Because of the rains, even the easy parts had a lot of rocks sticking out and there was little flat footing. The places with flat footing were so dark my headlamp didn't illuminate them much at all. The trail was narrow and the grass around it was high, so sometimes all I could see was a divot in the grass where the trail was. The course was well marked with glowsticks at most of the the major curves and at all the intersections. I never got lost, and the only places I wasn't sure where the trail went there was a glowstick to lead me on. Running (actually walking) at night is, as I have read, a very different experience. The sense of time is dilated, so a five minute walk feels more like 10 to 20. Now that I was walking the loop, except for a half mile stretch that was a service road, flat and safe, my loop times were 1:25. This was still actually quite fast -- there were a few people still running loops in the one hour range, but a lot of people were closer to two for a loop. The course is very technical -- lots of rocks, lots of ups and downs, turns, trees, roots, streams, etc. The data I have is that I'm pretty good at this type of terrain: I slowed down less at night, despite walking, than most other people. The first two loops I drank my Succeed! Amino and didn't eat any snacks. I did have a foul-up on loop two -- I had put my drink powder in my bottles and was planning to get water at the unmanned aid station. That station had a single cooler, with Gatorade. Gatorade and Succeed is too sweet -- frankly Gatorade is too sweet, and I think that was part of my stomach problems for a while. Every aid station I put just water in the bottles, diluting the crappy mixture into drinkability. My dinner was still sitting a bit heavy in my stomach as well. I had forgotten my S!-Caps and after three loops I was swelling a bit. Fortunately a nice runner gave me three of his -- I took one with some water and drank nothing but water for the rest of loop three and I was feeling much better. I started to get hungry on loop four, which is a good sign, since it meant my stomach had settled and my electrolytes were in balance. But. There's always a but. During my fourth loop, about 16 or 17 miles into the run, I was running the one runnable section, with my light turned off because the full moon was out and high. In the shadow of some trees a hole lurked that I found, and I rolled my ankle. I have strong ankles, so I mostly ignored this and kept on running, then walking when the trail narrowed and got technical again. Less than a mile later, on a downhill, I put my foot just a little wrong and I could feel the same spot give a mighty twinge. As I kept walking I thought about it for a while. Between my ankle, completely soaked and muddy shoes and socks (the first water was within 100 feet of the main aid station and my drop bag), and the feeling that my toenails were again taking a beating, and my feet were hurting from all the hard surface, I decided to drop when the loop was over. The only real reason was because I did not want to chance actually spraining my ankle, but the wet muddy uncomfortable feet were a strong impetus as well. Now that I had decided this I just had to walk two miles back to the main aid to get my last loop recorded and change. I finished around 12:30 and called my wife, but her phone was off, so I just stayed up all night helping the other runners and chatting with the people who had finished. I changed batteries in several lights, filled some water bottles, and mostly just hung out until morning. Because this was a timed race I did not DNF, but I did finish nearly last among the 6-hour runners because I only did 20 miles. I'm not sure how my pace would have fared had I not injured my ankle. The third and fourth loops took me 1:25 each. I had been planning to change shoes and socks at the next stop, to get into something dry for a few moments and mostly to get into something without mud on and in it. Cleaning my shoes out this afternoon, I had several muddy globs inside the shoe. That's just not fun to run in. Had I managed to keep a 1:25 to 1:30 per loop for the rest of the race, I would have finished 45 miles around 7:50 am, which based on last year's results would have been 5/15. There were more runners this year, and I didn't pay really close attention to their loop times, but 9 or 10 loops appears to be about the most anyone would run this year too (I haven't yet seen the official results). But I don't know that I wouldn't have started walking slower, as my feet were hurting and I may have gotten tired. I did learn again from this experience. First, I should use more light to make the trail more visible. While I can walk with little light aid, I can move faster the more secure I feel in my footing. I want to try a pair of waterproof socks. My feet would still be moist from sweat but I think they'd not be quite so soaked. I need to get a pair of gaiters, to keep the trail grit from getting into my shoes and grinding my feet into hamburger. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get farther, but the trail was quite brutal. Between the technical aspect, the water (it's normally a trail with some water crossings, but one runner joked it was more like water with some trail crossings), the mud and grit, I worked hard for over 5 hours and I have the soreness to prove it. I learned how to walk and run at night with at least some success. I learned never drink Gatorade, ever, ever. I'm always pleased to have learned something new for my experiment of one.