This week has marked my re-entry into the world of morning running. Yes, it may be hard to believe, but there was a year or two of a.m. running during grad school (thanks, Cari!), when I could fit naps in between work and classes. But it’s been a struggle to work it into my M-F 9-5 routine — with morning phone calls to Germany and late evenings at work or class or with friends — and so I gave up trying (sorry, Cari!) and ran in the evenings or not at all.

But when I developed my training plan for the NYC Half, and decided to really go for it, I realized that I could not fit all of that running into my evenings (at least, not without giving up my social life). Nor do I enjoy running in the heat and humidity at the end of the day. Apparently an August half-marathon was all the motivation I needed to make the switch, because, here I am, having run at 6:30am twice so far this week.

I can hardly believe it myself. I’m a little extra tired at the end of the day, but I think that will settle down in the next week or so (it might not have been the smartest to embark on this early journey after a long weekend of late nights). So I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and see how it goes.

Next week I try my first tempo run, and will definitely report back on how that goes. All of my past training has just been about getting out there and getting the mileage done, so I’m curious to see what I can get out of doing some speed work.

On on!