Does anyone go out for a run at 2AM, 3AM, or 4AM?

[quote]will wrote:

I am mainly a more conservative 5am to 5:30 start time. However, at some point in my life, I have run at every hour of the day or night. Where I live I used to have to worry about gays hitting on me.

Wow. Sounds horrifying. How did you ever survive the gays hitting on you?

I start work at 6 am, so I'm out the door for my first run of the day at 3:30am. You get use to it, I've done it for 8 or 9 years now. The good thing is I'm done work at 2pm, so I do my second run in day light. The worse part was getting use to going to bed at 8pm.

David Katz wrote:

I do a great deal of course measuring in the middle of the night ( 1 pm - 5 am )- less traffic.

Some of it in Central Park (with the approval of the Parks and Police).

You see some interesting stuff at that time of the night!

Central Park has some huge wildlife roaming around.

I turned the New Year's Eve Midnight Run in to a long run once. Cops were giving me strange looks.

Those raccoon can be scary.

It is illegal to run at night on some government and privately owned property, otherwise I think you're protected by The Constitution.

Years ago a friend and myself used to have evening shifts finishing at 1:00 AM (I did) Used to meet outside my place something like 20 to 2:00 AM for a 6 - 7 mile run. For me it was my second run of the day. Beauty of this was I (we) didn't have to rise & shine 7 or 8 AM next day. Mind you this was during the Summer, evenings were great.

With my present AM deliveries I see plenty of runners 4, 5 AM getting their miles in. And a lot of these are women! Only things to worry about are the deer, hell they are so tame!

I just went and I recommend it! So peaceful quiet and much cooler!

I run around these times regularly, sometimes I run with a headlight on sometimes not depending on the route I'm taking and whether I think I really need it.

I live a relatively small city (20,000 people) and at first I would get some attention from the cops, they would turn around and do a double take but by now after training around this time for about a year I think most of them expect to see me now. I could almost play a game on how many times I pass a cop or they pass me on some nights. I wonder what they think about me, first I'm on one side of town, then back on the other, then back on the other side again, it's like some type of strange cop/runner land polo.

I’ll run at 4 am to beat the heat. Think the earliest I’ve ever run was 3 am. In our area for some reason the skunk population has increased. Had a stand off with a skunk on one of my early runs.

Lucky to live in a fairly safe area. Here is no traffic so you have the road to yourself.

0350-0400 is my start time. I live in Florida. I usually see 15-20 Gators during my runs. I use a headlight and the (shining) eyes are easy to see. I am not sure how many Gators see me.

I have to leave for work by 5 am, so if I run in the morning, its at 330 am. Its kind of strange to sleep to 1 pm, run around 9 or 10 pm and wake up in the am man.

Anyways, I see people leaving bars or who have left bars, usually drunk. Always a few people on the road. Thank about it, starbucks opens at 430 am and some gyms open by 5, which means the people who work there are up even earlier. I've even seen one girl out jogging every now and then. The only thing is you have to be real careful because people don't expect runners at that time.

Being 21 this year many of my friends are throwing big parties. We will drink and then head to the club later and then I'll go run with my other running friend at 3 or 4am and then sleep until the day... It gets worse during the break because we will do that almost every night from Wednesday till Sunday

I normally start my weekday runs at 5 am but I have started as early as 3 am when I had to travel early in the morning. The body doesn't work so well at that time but the streets are really quiet and I like the feel of being out that early.

In high school, I had an AP class that started at 6:50. This was back in the early 90s.

Our coach didn't have us do a lot of mileage at practice, so I woke up and ran at 4:00 every morning before school. 70 minutes. It took me a good 45 minutes to get to school, park, and get to my desk, so I had to leave the house by 6:00 to be there on time.

I loved it back then, but I don't think I could do it now. Maybe I would get used to it.

I would see weird things on my runs. Drunk people, people doing lawn work, crazy animals like beavers and coyotes. My parents hated it.

I shall try this.

FIFY

everything but the food wrote:

We're talking Krispy Kreme

I have run at every time of day. Every summer fifteen mile run I have run has started between 3:45am to 4:45am.

Noone goes for a run at those times. Just ask him.

Nightrider 23 wrote:

Does anyone here go out for a run at 2AM, 3AM, or 4AM?

Sometimes if my sleep schedule is messed up because I am not working and sleeping until 1PM I end up doubling and doing an easy run at 3AM LoL. It's legal, but if the police drive by in some neighborhoods they may think it's kind of strange. Any thoughts?

I start before 5am daily to run before work and have started as early as 3am. Starting before 4am sucks. Where I live there are always people going to and from the manufacturing jobs so I always see cars or the few others exercising early. Plus there is enough light pollution seeing where I'm going is never an issue.

When I go back to where I grew up if I run early its a completely different world. There is no one out and it can be hard to see.

What really sucks is doing hard workouts this early. Partly because you wakeup and go. Intervals are tough although Tempos are more manageable.

In college off-season we used to go out for 6-8 mile loop after drinking till 2 AM....I do not recommend this, but if you're in college and feel like sleeping all the next day, it's a perfectly fine strategy - and it DOES beat running hungover in the heat of the day!

I ran at all hours during the night. Depending on my day and schedule I would run at 12am, 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am, and 5am. This was during my college days, I can't do this anymore.

Those late-late night runs were the best in my life. The quietness and solitude (the small college town I lived in at the time was like a ghost town at night) along with the best runners' high I would experience. During those runs I would run for the pure joy of running, not for time or health or training or fitness, it was for pure love of running.

I miss those days.