I wasn't much of a morning person until college when I joined the Marines; trust me, u become conditioned to pop out of bed after 3 months of drill instructors waking you up in the most creative of ways... Since then it's been automatic; 5 min before the alarm goes off (5:30) I am already putting my shoes on to go for my run. And that's that. Unfortunately, I can't be a party animal anymore as I am pretty tired by 10pm. Can't have everything in life...
Look at it this way. If your living on the East Coast(which I do) and you can easily wakeup by 8:15-8:30AM, well West Coast time its only 5:15-5:30AM. So in actuality you can do it you just need to adjust so that you can do it here. I found it very simple to to do in the past by just getting to bed at 10PM and come 6:30AM your ready to roll. The only issue is bringing the body tempature up so that it feels ready to go within 30 mins of rising. Heated tiles are now big buyers on the home improvement front as are heated slippers, not to mention getting a big boiling cup of tea in you asap. People in general feel off in the mornings due to the drop in body tempature due to being stationary for 8hrs plus. The key is getting your body tempature up to speed as fast as possible in the morning to ward off the cobwebs of the sleep portion of your 24 clock.
There is a good read on Bobby Curtis on the front page of let's run today read that if you think you can't change your sleep patterns.
In my opinion, NO. My Dad has always been a morning person (up at 6am every day). On the other hand there's me (age 47) that get up at 8am (9 or 10am on weekends). I rarely run before noon ever. I still require 9-10 hours of sleep a night (I run about 5 mile/day and walk about 5 miles/day). Oh sure some days I can get up early but why force it?
Of course it's possible. It's all a matter of establishing a routine. Just go to bed early and wake up early. Get up when the alarm goes off, no excuses. It's just a matter of having the discipline to stick with the routine EVERY DAY- no sleeping in on the weekends. That just throws off your body's sleep patterns.
Because I had the discipline to establish a daily routine, I wake up at 4 a.m., seven days a week without an alarm clock.
On the subject of whether or not one should even try to become a morning person:
I read of a study that found that people who trained in the mornings raced better in the mornings, and people who trained in the evenings raced better in the evenings. I read it in Jogger's World a couple years ago, so the study probably only applied to people that ran once a week, or swimmers training for bike races, or overweight giraffes...but it makes a bit of sense, so if you're training for morning races, there's one more reason to become a morning person.
This is the schedule im currently on: http://xkcd.com/320/