Yup, it's definitely morning...

I know not everyone considers an 8am run ‘early’, but I run almost exclusively in the late afternoon or early evening.  The rare exceptions to this are race days or the occasional meeting of a friend at the park for an early morning run on a fine weekend.

Like today.

There are benefits to running early.  It virtually removes the chance that your daily quota of mileage will be interrupted by something important, or that something important is interrupted by your run.  The roads and trails are quieter.  The weather is cooler.

It is a bit different than an afternoon or evening run in other, less obvious ways, though.  Pre-run hydration and nutrition needs are more readily managed with a later run, early morning drowsiness is a non-issue, and, because I have to work my day around my run, it’s something that’s in my thoughts frequently.  That last point is a subtle difference I hadn’t anticipated until I met my good friend John for an early morning run last weekend; the rest of the day I kept feeling guilty that I wasn’t going to be running later, that I wasn’t thinking about running.  I suspect today will be the same, that despite the 8 – 9 miles I clocked this morning, I’ll feel like I haven’t fulfilled my running quota come dinner time.

I've run many, many miles here...

I arrived at the park at 8am again this morning, not sure if John was going to be there.  We’d quickly agreed to do so last weekend after our run as we parted ways, but we hadn’t communicated at all during the week, so I wasn’t surprised when he hadn’t shown up by 8:10.  Probably figured I wasn’t going to be there (I wasn’t even sure what I was doing there at that hour!) and ran somewhere/when else.  No worries, I hopped off onto the trail and began my morning run.

I did my best to follow the course for the upcoming Through The Redwoods run in August, mostly as a point of curiosity; I know these trails well.  It was a cool, misty, almost foggy morning and it took a couple of miles for my hands warm up.  The hills in the deeper part of the forest are daunting, however, and take quite a bit of energy burn to conquer — no more chilly anything!

Hard to beat scenery like this

Shortly after I turned around at the top of course I spotted another runner heading towards me:  John!  Turns out we’d had a little miscommunication on the time and he’d shown up about half an hour after I did.  Cheering our good fortune at meeting in the middle of the woods, we continued back taking a detour at his suggestion to the ‘observation deck’, an old structure that sits atop a hill in the middle of it all with some great vistas, weather dependent of course.  This added a bit of distance to the run which was fine by me, we had a good time chatting about everything and whatever and finished off our morning in good spirits.

We agreed to meet again next Saturday.  I’ll be sure to hydrate a little better before hand, and to bring some fluid with me (I neglected to do so today, anticipating a shorter run) to make the end of the run a bit more comfortable.  And who knows, maybe that afternoon I won’t feel guilty about not running, again, come dinner time.

The misty cool morning view -- see you again next Saturday