Running When You Don't Feel Like It

For those who run in the morning, often the hardest part of the run can be getting out of the door. Later in the day, the issue can be finding time for a run--sometimes work goes later than expected, you get invited to an event you just can't turn down, etc.--but in the morning, provided you wake up early enough, you can always squeeze in your run.

During the summer months I have little trouble getting up early because I know if I don't it I'll have to run in the sweltering heat. Compared to the afternoon or evening, the morning is almost pleasant except on the hottest of days and in the summer I'm all but guaranteed a beautiful sunrise during my run.

Enter fall and winter.

Suddenly running early in the morning means running during the coldest part of the day--in the dark--when my bed is so warm.

Here's the where the self-motivation really comes into play. On mornings like today, when it's dark, windy and rainy, and not all that warm, I remember one of my favorite passages from Once a Runner:

Quenton Cassidy knew what the mystic-runners, the joggers, the runner-poets, the Zen runners and others of their ilk were saying. But he also knew that their euphoric selves were generally nowhere to be seen on dark, rainy mornings. They primarily wanted to talk it, not do it. Cassidy very early understood that a true runner ran even when he didn’t feel like it, and raced when he was supposed to, without excuses and with nothing held back.

Sure enough, the roads were pretty empty this morning but I did see a few hearty soles souls out there. Have they read Once a Runner? They probably didn't need to.