I must be in heaven. Out of all the places in the world that I have run in, Alaska just blows my mind. I never get used to the flight up here first of all, no matter how many times I have done it. Usually when we fly westbound with these faster generation planes and it's during the sunset, the sunset can take up to two hours since we are flying at close to 650 miles per hour in the same direction as the earth. But when you fly northwestbound across Canada into Alaska the sun holds still on the horizon like a great flaming ball and then it slowly rises and moves across the mountain line for the next 5 hours. This time of year Fairbanks is getting almost 20 hours of direct sunshine. It's also hard to comprehend that we cross most mountain ranges in the United States in about 5 minutes at this speed. The Wasatch range in about 3, and the Rockies and Uintas combined in about 20 minutes. But when you fly across Alaska you are over what seems like a continuous mountain range for three hours. It's so big it just makes you grin.
I landed the plane with the sun blazing on my right side at 11pm, 1am mountain time. When we got to the hotel (cabins on the river actually) I knew that I had to get out for a midight run in the sun even though Rob and I had run that morning in the snow up City Creek in Salt Lake. I threw on a pair of shorts and my sunglasses and went for a quick 4 miler. It was about 75 degrees and not a cloud in sight. I have three days here and I'll be running them all!
In the morning I hit a huge breakfast of reindeer sausage and pancakes with the crew and made some phone calls to Running Club North, the local club to see what the locals were doing. Today was a track workout with intervals and I had no interest in that, but did get some good info on trails along the ridges. I headed out for an easy 14 on some of the nicest trails I have seen. A bit sore from the marathon still, but this is just the life. No way I'm not going to be on the trails. When I got back I had a message from Dan, a local trail runner who wanted to do a long overnight trail run tonight starting at 10pm. That is going to take a few hours to think about, but since I don't have to fly the plane back for a few more days it's pretty tempting.
It was so hot after the run that I swam a good 30 minute workout in the river to the side of the cabins. Man is that water cold.
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