A glance to my right revealed the first rays of sunlight above the eastern horizon. Immediately I smiled and picked up my running pace slightly. Something about the witnessing the sun’s entrance into the day energizes me. There is a long, flat (mostly) road that runs through a future neighborhood just north of my house. Logging miles along that stretch is one of my favorite places to watch the world transform from night to day.
So as I looked to my right, to the east, during that run last week, I was overcome by a calm confidence. The morning light bathed the Las Vegas valley, and the mountains to my left crept out of the shadows. My entire world came into focus.
Yet 45 minutes earlier I was in bed, hitting snooze on my phone alarm, and engaging in a back-and-forth mental battle worthy of a devil and angel on my shoulders.
The truth is I’ve never been great or consistent about getting out of bed early in the morning. Few things make me happier or more motivated than a good running sunrise, but I’ve chosen laziness and just a bit more sleep more times than I want to admit.
In high school I rarely went to sleep before 1 a.m. When my alarm sounded, I ignored it or turned it off. My parents fought with me to get me out of bed most mornings, and I was consistently borderline late getting to school. When I was homeschooled (through 10th grade) that wasn’t as big of an issue. But when I went to public high school for junior and senior year, it became a problem.
I kept my terrible sleeping waking up habits through college. And most of the time I was staying up late without purpose. Mindless TV and video games late at night or rushing to finish school assignments last minute kept my late-night habits going.
Then as a sportswriter out of college, getting home late after covering games became another consistent pattern.
Then I became a runner, and my desire to transition into a morning person became a priority for the first time. Living in Texas and Louisiana means you run early or suffer more heat later in the day. And I’m a terrible heat runner.
I’ll also add that my up late and sleep in issues negatively affected my marriage as well. My wife is the morning person prototype. She wakes up before her alarm goes off almost every day. She’s incredibly productive in the morning, and she has never enjoyed staying up late. We didn’t have as many scheduling issues when she was in surgery residency and working heavy hours. But as soon as her schedule became static, me staying up late and sleeping in were an immediate stressor.
Still, I struggled to find morning routine consistency.
I had a running streak of at least a mile a day that lasted three and a half years. On more occasions than I can count, I rushed out the door at 11:30 p.m. or later just to squeeze in a mile to keep the streak going. Most of my long runs for many of my marathon buildups started after 8 p.m.
I was never happy with late night running. Typically I would be tired from working during the day, and I was much more likely to cut a run short or ditch a workout at night.
But no matter how much I wanted to be a bright, shiny morning person, my resolve the night before constantly turned into avoidance the following morning.
“I’ll start tomorrow,” became my morning-person motto.
Until the past 16 months.
I’ve learned the secret to becoming the morning person of your dreams. Become a parent.
I’m half joking, of course. But Addie’s entrance into the world brought a much more rigid structure for me. I’ve thrived with the firm schedule. I’ve mentioned this to several people, but Strava actually labeled me as a “sunrise chaser” in my 2020 yearly wrapup. For anyone who knew me at all in the first 34 years of my life, that title is jaw-dropping.
Yet, it said I’m a sunrise chaser right there next to 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. being my most consistently active hour each day for all of 2020. Since I ran at least three miles on all but four days of last year, that means I was more likely to watch the sun come up while running than not last year.
Sunrise chaser is just a fun label Strava came up with, but I’ve adopted it. I want that to be my running identity.
Still, I struggle. Like last week, when I almost missed out on an incredible sunrise view just because I didn’t want to leave my bed. The first three weeks of 2021 have been tough. My snooze button has gotten more use than almost any month of 2020. I’ve skipped morning long runs and workouts to stay under the covers.
So I’m going to lean back on the habits and the mindset that helped me transition to being a morning person in the first place.
First, I need to go back to setting myself up for success. That means going to sleep earlier (we are typically in bed around 8:30 p.m. these days, but I am always tempted to keep watching shows on my laptop or scrolling twitter). Going to bed at a decent time is my best weapon against morning laziness.
Second, I need to refocus on my goals. I’ve tried a lot of ways to trick myself into waking up early in the past. Laying out my clothes the night before, drinking water right when I wake up, placing my phone far enough away that I have to stand up to turn off the alarm. None of those things have worked as well as concentrating on what I want to accomplish. A marathon PR, qualifying for Boston, increasing speed and endurance. To reach those goals, I must run and run with purpose.
It’s much easier to do that in the morning when I get up early than when I sleep in and then try to squeeze in a shorter run on the treadmill during Addie’s nap time or selfishly take off for a few miles as soon as Rachel gets home from work. The bottom line — when I blow off my morning run, I’m choosing selfish laziness. And that’s a bad way to start the day (and for me leads to feeling down the rest of the day).
Third, I need to seek consistent progress instead of an all-or-nothing mentality. I have the tendency to go all in. And when something goes wrong, I let that snowball and completely derail me. If I lost my morning battle and skip a workout, I turn around and give up on the rest of the week. “I’ll start back next week,” becomes my easy out. I need to realize that failing is a part of progressing sometimes. But I can’t let one setback turn into multiple failures or become permanent.
It’s all about chasing that next sunrise.