I don't follow the normal crowd of drinking and partying all night on New Year's Eve. I mean I use too.  It was fun and all but hangovers suck the next morning and I swear I age 10 years after a long night of drinking, lol!  Those days are long gone. Instead I spent my NYE running 20 miles with 5000 feet of vertical. 

I woke up that morning and ate a bowl of oatmeal with dried apples, raisin, pecans and maple syrup.  Headed out and ran 12 miles with hills.  Then on the last minute my friend called and said they are doing "Across the Years Run" where you start running before midnight and run through midnight.
Well I had a good morning run and pushed the hills a little and could feel my tired quads and thought "man I just ran this morning" but I am adventurous and of course I was going to run with them! 

I had to plan my meals right for the evening run, and I didn't have much to choose from at the house.  Lunch was yams and apples and dinner was gluten free pancakes and later followed by potatoes.  I had to eat more that I felt comfortable with in my stomach. I had just ran 12 miles with hills so I needed to re-fuel and then to fuel up for my evening run. Actually if I could snap my fingers and could have any meal I wanted I would have preferred a dinner of fruit, like a huge bowl of mangoes and pineapples. But it is winter and produce is minimal. I can get great fruit, but sometimes I have an abundance of ripe fruit and sometimes I don't. None the less what I ate fueled me perfectly.

Our goal was to start at one side of the mountain and go up and over, 10 miles with 3000 vertical. We started at 10pm at the trail head. The moon was 80% full and we had a clear night, about 28F. I was so bundled.  We started the climb, up to the peak.  I love this trail and it was the first time I ran it at night. It was sooo cool! The trail had snow on it and it was packed down. Footing was just fine. We arrived at the top of the peak 5 mintues before midnight. My friends busted out the bubbly and we cheered.  I don't drink but I did have a sip.  Then we continued our trek to the other side of the mountain.  We didn't get very far. We were sinking in knee deep. The trail was not packed down at this point. And with all the downed trees it made it difficult to find the trail. We decided to turn around. Good choice. So we headed back to where we started. The downhill was so fun. The trail was packed down so no roots or rocks to trip over. And the moon and stars lit up the snowy trail and the snow sparkled. We did have headlamps of course.

Even though we didn't get to the other side, we still got 8 miles in with lots of climbing, a three hour trip.  Alot of the time was spent pulling ourselves out of the snow on top and taking pics and drinking bubbly.  I got home at 1:30am and didn't even feel the need to eat.  I had eaten all day so I was good.  My head hit the pillow and I don't remember closing my eyes.  I would love to do this again next year. Gotta get some snow shoes though. We did have perfect weather but I just don't think we will get so lucky with the weather next year.