Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Early morning running - Lessons learned

Today I decided to get a jump start to the day and get a run in before work. Since the Seattle marathon is a month away, I wanted to do a 10 mile run today.  So I set my alarm clock for 06:15, got woken up at 05:30 by my 4 year old son, by 6am I was ready to go.

Lessons learned:

1.  Eating a banana and a pack of gummy bears before the run I thought I would be safe to run right away, but even with a banana I think it's better to wait 1/2 hour.

2.  I played soccer 2 days before and had a knock on my quad, no big deal at all.  But after 5 miles every little injury is a big deal.

3.  There are a lot of old people going for walks at 6am.  Normally I get motivated seeing other runners or people being active.  Instead I felt myself saying "Ahh, that's a good life I could get used to...".  Not exactly motivating me to run faster.

4.  In the dark you need to be more careful.  I stepped into two little potholes before learning this one.  Another thing to be very aware of is that your watch is hard to read.  My pace was all over the place, it made me realize how much I rely on my watch to monitor pace.

5.  On the contrary, the sunrise in Seattle can be pretty awesome.  Kept my attention for the second half of the run.