Spit, Or the Downside of the Petzl Headlamp

I've been singing the praises of my new Petzl headlamp in several previous posts. It's bright, comfortable on my head, long-lasting.  I saw no downside...until now.

This weekend, fortunately or unfortunately, the Petzl revealed something quite disgusting.  I was out my Pig Farm 10 miler route, in the pre-dawn hours.  The stars were brilliant, the roads were empty save for me, wind was minimal....it was a great morning to be alive and running.  I was running as I normally do, which includes a certain amount of normal bodily functions.

Whenever I run, and particularly this winter when a nagging cold has been hovering in the background for some weeks now, I seem to generate a lot of mucous. It's easier for me to spit it out rather than swallow, and when I spit, I eject the sputum like from a blowgun, in what I always assumed was a compact wad.

Note the use of the past tense "assumed."

The truth-telling Petzl headlamp, positioned as it was on my forehead perhaps 8" above my mouth, revealed that rather than simply a small compact wad of mucous being spit, there was a huge bunch of aerosolized saliva also being launched.  It seemed to be a cloud in the brilliant beam of the lamp, like using one's high beam headlights in a snowstorm or fog (i.e., almost blinding).

This is a photo of a sneeze but the effect I saw was virtually identical (photo credit here):

Anyone downwind would surely have been in the drift path and bathed in myriad germs.

I plan to mend my ways and spit only when absolutely necessary.