Treadmilling before the crack of dawn

Today's run (treadmill): 25 minutes

I think this early treadmill workout thing is beginning to stick. This morning, for the third week in a row, I got in a few running miles before starting my work day. I went to bed intending to do this run, but I'd forgotten to prepare for it. When I got up, I saw that I hadn't laid out my running gear or put towels down for my brief post-workout recovery period. It doesn't take that long to do those things, but in the morning every minute counts.

Time was my friend today. I got up before my alarm went off. Even with those extra preparation steps, I was on the treadmill before 4:00 AM. The bargain I make with myself is to cap these early runs at 25 minutes. That's a short enough time to seem manageable before the crack of dawn, but long enough to provide some benefit.

The run went well from beginning to end. I guess I could have pushed harder, but I knew I had an hour-plus drive and a full day's work ahead of me. I finished feeling like I'd worked reasonably hard, but I still had plenty of energy. I probably won't have a chance to run again until Friday so it was nice to have a couple of miles in the weekly bank. I've felt really good on my last few runs. I hope that continues.

Back to the 4:00 AM run

Today's run (treadmill): 25 minutes

The alarm woke me up just before 4:00 AM and that gave me enough time to roll out of bed, change into running clothes and hop on the treadmill at 4:05. It's been well over a year since I did a run at that early hour and I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't quite ready to go back to running with a headlamp on the the dark streets of my neighborhood, so the treadmill had to do.

Even though I planned to run just 25 minutes this morning, the time passed so slowly that it felt like I'd been on the treadmill for an hour. It wasn't a particularly hard workout or the fact that I went from sleeping to running in a matter of minutes. Some runs are like that. And those runs happen most often when you're on the treadmill at 4:00 AM.

Nostalgic for those self illuminated runs

Need to spend some time with my Tikka Plus

Today's run (street): 3.4 miles

I'm up every morning at 5:00 AM, but I usually don't run until the kids have left for school. I've thought once or twice about getting out on the road earlier, like I did when I commuted. I considered doing that today, but by 5:30 AM, I was already in work mode. Maybe tomorrow.

I wasn't sure what effect (if any) yesterday's flu shot would have on my run today. To be on the safe side, I planned an easy workout. To be even safer, I left the foot pod and heart rate monitor home and didn't turn on my Garmin's GPS. I didn't want to see any evidence of my pace or effort I was expending, lest I be influenced to pick up my speed. I did capture my time, so if I really wanted to know how fast I ran, I could calculate pace based on my distance. So far I haven't been tempted to do that. Okay, maybe a little.

Besides waking up feeling fatigued, I don't think I'm suffering much from the vaccination. Today's run was a pleasure because I wasn't thinking about speed and effort. I did experiment a little with my form at times, but it was an easy run. Tomorrow I may step it up a bit more.

I'm going to be the city late tomorrow, so I may not try to do an early run after all. Still, it would be fun to go out again with my headlamp and run the empty streets of my neighborhood. I don't miss doing that at 4:00 AM, but with no need to catch a 6:20 AM train, 5:30 running might provide a nice change.