Running to the Sun

"Runners wake up before the sun".  I like that. It explains why I get up by 4:30 am most mornings...including weekends...to go running.  It's second nature now, I've been doing it so long.  I like the coolness of the early morning, especially in the hot summer months.  In the winter, I love being the first human footprint in freshly fallen snow.  When it's raining...glory!  I get a shower to go with the sweating that I'm going to do anyway.  Yes, real runners wake up before the sun.

The not-so-fun part of running early morning is that I run on an empty stomach.  Actually that's not technically true:  I do have a cup of coffee with Almond Milk first so there is some nutrition, right? OK, really on an empty stomach.  I've tried every form of eating before an early morning run and none have worked for me:  Oatmeal, cereal, gels, toast.  All feel like a solid, undigested lump in my stomach and the gels just made me feel sick.  

The first few minutes of my early morning runs I'm asleep.  I'm awake but it feels like I'm sleeping.  My legs barely turn over, I'm heaving and cursing, "WTF am I doing this hour of the morning?"  The feelings generally pass within a couple of minutes and I pick up my pace by about 1 km.  

One special run recently was a stair drill I did at 5:30 am with the Full Moon almost directly overhead.  Crazy light:  Cool blue hue washed over everything and illuminated the stairs clearly.  Yes the people living in the condo beside this particular park saw a crazy runner running up and down stairs before sunrise...correct that, crazy would be sitting inside their warm condo watching a runner do 'stair repeats' calling him crazy.  Yeah, that's it!

One of the downsides of getting up so early is that bedtime comes early:   9:30 pm, 10 pm latest most nights.  It puts a damper on watching the late night talk shows but I catch up with my favourites on Facebook the next morning.

So...are you an early morning runner?

Until next time...
ThatRunninGuy