In the darkness before the dawn...

Miles to Date: 213
Money to Date: $2,480

I am not the biggest Allman Brothers Fan. I appreciate a lot of their music and enjoy their greatest hits album, but that is about the extent of my fan-dom. That being said, they have a song that I absolutely adore. It is a song that they only performed live and never did in the studio and it's called "Soulshine." It is a phenomenal song, go download it. Do it now.

The point of this is that there is a line in the song that I love that goes "Boy, in the darkness before the dawn you got to let your soulshine." That line was going through my head this morning as I trekked through the pre-dawn gloom.

Running in the morning can be a surreal experience, it's so quiet and there are so few people out. Given the time I need to start my runs, especially the long runs, this is very much the case. Due to the darkness when I start my runs I have stopped running with an IPod, so it is just me and my thoughts on the road. It can be great and at times it can be maddening (I spent the better part of a seven mile run with a Miley Cyrus tune stuck on loop).

The next three or four weeks are going to present the biggest challenge of my training. Everything I have done to date has been building towards this few brutal weeks. So I'll be out in the darkness before the dawn, working towards my goal, all I'd ask is that if you are one of the few people on the road that you keep an eye open for me.