Running 101

Top 5 reasons to run in the morning:
5. There are less bikers out in the early morning, which equates to less sudden movements behind you or those annoying little ding-ding bells to indicate someone is coming up on your left.

4. The crisp, cool, morning air is an invigorating way to wake up.

3. The warm shower when you finish is a fabulous feeling.

2. It gives you an excuse to eat a lot in the morning.

and my number one reason to run in the morning:
1. If you run before 8am you are less likely to be seen walking and feeling like a wuss when doing so.

I made the mistake of not setting an alarm last night. Actually, it felt great to just sleep until I woke up. The bad thing is I went to bed at 10:30 and didn't really wake up until 9. Whoops. So by the time I got out of bed, dressed and had a little pre-workout snack, it was 10:15.

So I headed out on the trail. I was just going to run for an hour this morning - not worrying about distance or anything, just get out for an hour. I had done some preliminary stretching in my apartment and then headed out. 2 minutes into my run my legs were super tight, so I stopped to stretch them out. That worked for about 5 minutes before my right shin tightened up like it did last week. It wasn't the burning sensation like last week, but it was so tight.

Trying to keep my sanity, I sat down and started to massage it out. An older couple walked by me and watched me as I was working on my shin. The old man was grinning...probably because he's a little perverted, but whatever. I stood and started to run again and the pain flared so I walked. And walked. And massaged. And walked. And stretched. And ran - 20 feet. And massaged.

Finally after about 30 minutes of being out, my legs were fairly loose. This is SO not a good sign. It shouldn't take me 30 minutes to get warmed up, should it? If this is the case, my morning workouts are really going to have to start earlier, and if I work out during the day I'm going to have to talk to my boss about letting me work later so I can compensate for needing all of my workout time to get loose so I can have an actual workout.

I came back and did some moist heat on my leg which seemed to help, and then a warm shower. I'm not sure what to do. I'll have to think on this one.

The bad thing was that while I was out at 10:30 in the morning, there were thousands of bikers on the trail. I'm really not used to this, mostly because I'm usually out earlier so there's hardly anyone around. But even when I'd "sleep in" and not run until 8 or so, there's still usually more runners than bikers. So I felt really in the way. I think there were maybe 5 of us running out of all the people I saw, and maybe half a dozen walkers. The rest biking, biking, biking.

I have nothing against biking, but I do feel bad when I'm taking up space on the trail trying to stretch out my leg and there are bikes coming at me and I hear them coming up on me from behind. So I'll have to make it a point to run earlier all the time.