Morning runs a real struggle

I only run in the morning because that's the only time that works for me. I think the thing with morning runs is just having consistency with it. It takes awhile but you get used to it eventually. When I first started morning runs I'd be starving but sooner or later I got used to it so I don't get the munchies until after I finish the run. And now that I'm used to it my paces are identical to if I ran later in the day.

I think with morning runs you also need to make sure you're awake. When I wake up, I watch some funny videos on youtube to wake myself up before heading out.

How old are you?

Are you in school, and if so what school?

What time do you go to bed and wake up?

Usually takes 3-4 weeks for the body to get acclimated to it. Try doing 3 mile jogs at the same time each day. I found a consistent bed time was more important than wake time. I also would start my run within 15 minutes of waking up-- get up, use the restroom, 3-4oz glass of Arizona iced tea, and then out the front door running. That's what worked for me as I adjusted to morning runs, and my situation was very similar to yours.

When I ran in college, during the summer I did all of my runs in the evening/night when it was cool outside.

Anytime I tried to double and do a morning run, or run a summer 5k, it was terrible. My legs were always heavy, HR was high, and I just generally felt like crap.

We practiced in the morning at school, so I'd feel like crap for the first week or so that we were back, then all of a sudden everything felt good again. Happened every year for 4 years.

It's possible you aren't sleeping well, or need to make adjustments to your morning routine or something, but for me personally, it was just a matter of not doing morning runs often and needing some time to readjust to it.

If you've got a race you care about, I'd suggest trying to do as many of your runs in the morning as possible the week beforehand.

boomboom85 wrote:

What I'm not loving is the huge difference between my best runs (evenings) and my morning runs (which unfortunately include races).

at the point where folk start taking their training very seriously, it is recommended that you do your main training session each day at the same time as your race. in the real world of folk who have jobs, school and a life outside of running this is not always possible but it should be kept on the back burner as an ideal that you can aspire to.

therefore:

1) make your daily routine a real routine with regular times for meals and going to bed and getting up. make other things move around so that you can keep to your routine; if 9 o'clock is bed time then go to bed at 9 and make anything else wait for tomorrow. your body understands routine and will become accustomed to it but you have to stick to it or your body gets confused.

2) training is a series of adaptations. you do something and your body adapts, then you do it again and your body adapts some more. so, keep running in the morning and your body will adapt. how long this takes depends on how old you are, how hard you run in the morning, how regular your routine is and whether or not the cow parsley is in flower so you may not be able to control everything but your body will adapt, if you let it. I do my track sessions in the morning and jogging to the track I often feel like a dead dog but by the time I have done my warm-up and mobility and accelerations and so forth I am raring to go. it took a while to get to this point but I am not special or clever or talented; if I can do it then any half-motivated idiot can do it too.

3) if you are doing your main training in the evening then the morning run is recovery and regeneration and the actual pace/heart rate does not matter very much. don't fret the stuff you can't control, just relax, do those runs easy and take satisfaction from your consistency which, in time, will reward you in spades.

4) when entering morning races it is considered perfectly acceptable for you to ask to run at a different time. just ask the race director if you can start at 3:30 in the afternoon. they will usually be more than happy to oblige. there might not be any start pen, timekeepers, medals, opponents or finish line when you run but these are not as important to the whole racing experience as being able to run at a time that suits you, and you will of course be first in line for the baggage drop so there is that to consider. individuality is an often overlooked attribute; why aspire to be just like everyone else?

In other news, water is wet.

4) when entering morning races it is considered perfectly acceptable for you to ask to run at a different time. just ask the race director if you can start at 3:30 in the afternoon. they will usually be more than happy to oblige.

Dumb...Yes it might be “perfectly acceptable” to run the same course at 3:30 on the sidewalk, but what’s the point in entering the race then.

Hobby joggggeeeeerrr

ShreddyEddy wrote:

Dumb...Yes it might be “perfectly acceptable” to run the same course at 3:30 on the sidewalk, but what’s the point in entering the race then. Hobby joggggeeeeerrr

whooooooosh!

Honestly race day shouldn't be a problem. If you can't get the adrenaline going you need to get your mental game up.

I run first thing in the morning and on the occasions I do my workout in the afternoon it is a little faster since my body has been awake longer.

But if two hours you wake up you can't get going drink some coffee or something.

Water is wet. wrote:

In other news, water is wet.

haha +1

OP: those telling you that you do eventually get used to it if you keep it up are telling you the truth. I hate morning runs too, but eventually it becomes easier. As a non-morning run person, I always save the more serious/longer run for the second run. It doesn't matter much how crappy you feel if you are doing 3-5 easy miles. You aren't going to compromise the workout or anything.

try going w/ out a watch in AM and post badger miles... that way you don't get caught up w/ splits if your so worried.

That's cute and all, but the reason for some people's comparative lethargy in the morning is not mental, nor merely a lack of adrenaline. There are other physiological factors at play. In one year of racing, I ran between 15:40 and 15:54 at the four 5ks I did in the p.m., and and between 15:58 and 16:24 at the five races that I ran in the morning. That seems statistically significant, and I doubt I was just better at amping myself up for the p.m. races.

Why don't you just get your mental game up in the morning? Then your morning workouts would be as fast as your evening workouts.

This sentence makes no grammatical sense. You are missing at least two, and as many as five, words and/or punctuation marks.

You got the gist, playing grammar police is just a cover for you lack of knowledge in the subject matter.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

Playing grammar police is just a cover for you lack of knowledge in the subject matter.

I'm not covering for my lack of knowledge in the subject matter; I'm fully admitting that I don't know why I run slower in the mornings. I'd love to receive some useful advice, but you are covering for your lack of knowledge in the subject matter by spouting nonsense, i.e. that people who race slower in the morning are either (a) being mentally tough in the evening only, or (b) not actually racing slower in the morning.

[quote]` wrote:

That seems statistically significant... [\quote]

it might seem so, but it isn't. five is not a sample. data is not the plural of anecdote. also, you haven't allowed for any of the 187.34 (approximately) other factors that might affect race performance. did you even take the temperature, wind speed, humidity or altitude. did you compare your pre-race preparation, taper, sleep pattern, feeding or hydration schedules. have you considered the training you did between races which (duh!) is designed to improve your performance. if your answer to all of these is no, no, no, no and no then you have some interesting anecdotes about 5k racing in the mid-west but you do not have a statistical survey of factors affecting racing performance at different times of the day. whatever your theory, this doesn't support it.

you also claimed that there might be "other physiological factors," none of which you actually mentioned or considered, so, do you have anything of value to say on this subject or was "physiological factors," just a posh phrase you slipped in there to fool people into thinking you might have a clue?

[quote] I doubt I was just better at amping myself up for the p.m. races. [\quote]

why would you doubt that? seriously, most people are either a morning person or an evening person, they either rise with the larks or soar with the owls so you might not have deliberately "amped yourself up" for the pm races but you might naturally be more temperamentally suited to a maximum performance in the pm than the am. this difference is exactly what this thread is about but you conveniently ignore the entire topic because it suits your purpose to make the whole thing about you and your poorly conducted non-statistical survey. (your times aren't bad, though. how old are you?).

as for what Primero Numero Uno[\b] said,

[quote] If you can't get the adrenaline going you need to get your mental game up. [\quote]

I read this as a suggestion, on topic, that if your adrenaline is low (because you are a lark rather than an owl) then some coffee or mental techniques might be possible solutions to the problem. that seems to be a perfectly reasonable suggestion. please explain why you think "mental game" is not exactly the same as psyching yourself up for a supreme racing performance?

Cheers.

Do a half-mile jog/walk as soon as you get out of bed, no matter how slow. Drink coffee then take a hot shower. By 8am you'll be rearing to go.

Sleep in your running shorts.

I didn't think "physiological factors" was a posh phrase. I meant it to mean that there seems to be a difference in the body, not just in the mind, when running in the morning vs. the evening. You seem to be rejecting my hypothesis that I race slower in the morning than I do in the evening. Yet we all seem to agree that is harder to run in the morning.

I found the responses about consistency being helpful very encouraging. I was hoping to learn some similarly-helpful advice on how to bring morning race performances up to the level of evening race performances. I don't think "try harder" is it.

Yeah I'm the same way. My runs suck in the morning. My solution for races is to just wake up earlier.

Like for an 8 am race I'll wake up at 4:30 am. Eat breakfast right away so I have time to digest. Get out of the house and run an errand (grocery shopping works well because you're walking around walking up your body). Before I leave for the race I take a shower. Really just anything to trick my body into thinking it's the middle of the day rather than morning.

Another trick is to do a slightly harder warmup than you'd normally do. Like 20 minutes before the gun do a 400 at 5k race pace. On the roads you'd have to approximate this, but it can be done. This will get your heart rate up for sure but there is enough time to come back down. Then a couple sharp strides 10 minutes from the gun.

With all that your body should be awake. It's a lot of effort but I always took races seriously.