I love running in the late evening BUT.......

oceangirl99

The marathon I'm training for is of course in the morning. Ugh. I've tried running in the morning - it sucks. I've tried running at lunch - it sucks. I've tried running early evening - it's okay. I run at around 9 pm and feel like I'm FLYING!
I know I need to up my morning game or my race will be disastrous! Any tips for making the transition or do I just suck it up, wake up and go. Hope for the best that it will eventually get easier? I get that fueling is important - something I don't really think about in the evenings when I just go out at least an hour after I've eaten.

NorthCascades

I have an idea!

Talk everybody into running the marathon in New Zealand. But at the scheduled time. The rest of the runners should chip in for your airfare for coming up with such a great idea.

Hulkfan1

The air quality is not as good as in the morning...

emmamcgarity

Maybe start phasing in a short morning walk each day just to start a habit of being lightly active earlier yet retain your schedule of night time runs? After creating the habit of moving around earlier in the day,try adding a short morning run once per week?

trswallow

You need to do some of your runs in the morning around the time of the actual race. It is usually a good idea to treat some of your longest runs as a full dress rehearsal. This gives you the opportunity to work out your race prep; day before prep, morning schedule, and fueling.

Running later in the day there are a lot of things you don't need to think about; fueling( you've spent most of the day loading up), timing/getting dressed (you've probably been up/home for several hours before your run), restroom (you've probably made several restroom visits during the day)

My first marathon I started most of my long runs between 8 and 9 in the morning. On those mornings I worked out what and how much I would have for breakfast (oatmeal with brown sugar & peanut butter), and what didn't work for my breakfast (milk based meal replacement shake, I wanted to puke). I also figured out how long it would take me to get up, dressed, eat, and ready to go. My second marathon, 2 1/2 years later, I did ALL of my long runs in the afternoon. Night before the race I prepped my breakfast from memory and ended up fixing to much. I spent nearly 5 hours running with what felt like lead weights rolling around in my gut. I probably would have made myself puke if I was capable of it.

If you tend to eat supper late, then you might not have enough time to fully process supper before an early morning run, and could end up spending part of your run searching for a restroom. This is not something you want to discover on race day.

Doing training runs in the morning are not necessarily going to make morning runs suck less, but it might allow you to figure out what you need to do to make the race not suck more.

yirara

I have the same problem. For me it's a mixture between being a night person in general, having low blood pressure until sometime in the afternoon, and generally needing more energy in the morning and during daytime. Never found a proper solution for it to be honest. I just don't have the energy early on.

Mezzie1024

What day is your race? Maybe you could do morning runs that day each week and stick to your evening runs the rest of the week. Back when I ran, I had to do this out of necessity because of my work schedule, and it served me well on race day.

oceangirl99

The race is on June 22nd. Great suggestions everybody! I'm going to try to go for a morning run tomorrow because I don't work so it doesn't have to be SUPER early. If it is truly terrible, I will walk, working myself up to a run over the next couple weeks. Then I'll try to get a few long runs in at race time with proper fueling. At the same time, I'm going to work on New Zealand!