on running afowl

Once again I seem to be doing it wrong, at least according to a series of tips put together over at Runner’s World:

5:30 A.M. Don’t Hit Snooze
Morning runners should resist the temptation. Unless you’re chronically sleep deprived, get up with your alarm and run. “Once you get going, you’ll feel better, and the running will help shake off the sleepiness,” says Thomas Balkin, Ph. D., chief of the department of behavioral biology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. “The occasional night of inadequate sleep will not have catastrophic results.”

Lately I have been sleeping in later, hitting the snooze button or just setting my alarm to more closely match sunrise. I can’t keep that up forever, though; eventually my runs will have to begin while it’s still dark outside if I want to maintain my milage (or something close to it) during the winter.

But I agree: getting out on the road almost always does more to wake me up than anything else, whether it’s the snooze button, caffeine, or what have you. Occasionally, however, I will find myself falling into a running version of highway hypnosis.