Morning Run

The best time to run is the time of day when your normal schedule will most regularly allow you to run. For many busy people, that time is the morning. Studies of adult exercisers have shown the highest rate of regular compliance among those who work out is in the morning. It’s no surprise why—other than the sandman, there usually aren’t a whole lot of people placing demands on you at 6 a.m. But come the end of the work day, you might be pulled a million different ways, and it might be a lot easier to justify missing a run than to have to say “no” to people.

Most regular morning runners find that hitting the roads before work or school gives them energy for the whole day. It sure beats staggering out of bed at the last minute and starting your day in a stupor behind the wheel. Mentally, there are few greater feelings than starting your work day knowing that you’ve already achieved something personally significant.

Morning runners should take some extra precautions, however. Some studies have shown that regular morning runners get injured more often than evening runners. Your muscles are stiffer in the morning, and it’s harder to feel as though you’re making a smooth transition from rest to activity in the morning, especially when going right into a wake-up run. Additionally, most of the physiological attributes that contribute to good distance running, such as aerobic capacity, peak in the late afternoon and early evening, so you have to work a little harder in the morning to maintain a given pace. Also, most morning runners are trying to squeeze in a run without being late for work, so they might tend to skimp on a proper warm-up. You can see why morning runners might get injured more easily.

But that doesn’t mean you have to get injured. The solution is to include time for some gentle stretching, and just some overall waking up, when you’re setting your alarm clock for the next morning’s run. Give yourself at least 20 minutes from when you get out of bed to when you get out the door. Thirty minutes would be even better.
I know that this is precious time seemingly taken away from sleep. There are two things you can do to counter that feeling.

First, if your entire wake-up/warm-up/run/cool-down routine is going to take an hour, then go to bed an hour earlier the night before. (Try not to do it the other way and get up an hour earlier than usual after going to bed at your normal time.) But what about all that stuff you need to do in the evening before you go to bed? My second bit of time-management advice is to save some of the little chores, such as paying a couple of bills or packing lunches, for that wake-up time I advise between getting out of bed and starting your run. If you’ve ever started the day by running as a beautiful sunrise unfolds, you know that the effort of getting out of bed is usually worth it.