How many of you out there train at night? I do not know many. In fact when I tell people that I sometimes go run real late at night they think I am nuts. This pattern of mine started way back in high school. Swimming season was at the same time as Cross Country season. Classes would get out at 3:30 PM and I used to go directly to swim practice. Then around 6:00 PM I had dinner followed by a couple of hours of homework. That meant that the only time I could run was before I went to bed. That is exactly what I did.
Running at night is perhaps not ideal but it is better than not running at all. It was good enough for high school cross country. The picture here is from one of my high school meets. Guess how old I am in the picture.
Now adays if my day goes haywire and I can not get out during the day, I just go at night. Last night I ran for 45 minutes around Boulder. The roads did not have too much ice on them. That was my main concern. In fact the moon was shining and I could see the ground very well. I could actually read my heart rate monitor without any additional light. The moon was so bright my body created a shadow on the ground.
The other reason running at night works well for me is because I am a night owl. I just can not operate well real early in the morning. In college I hardly ever signed up for 8 AM classes. Even 9:15 classes were tough. During my senior year I took 4 very hard engineering classes and one class which was a blow off. It was such a blow off class that there were about 20 Miami Hurricane football players in it. The problem was that my blow off class was at 8:00 AM. I aced my 4 engineering classes and got my lowest grade in the blow off. The teacher counted attendance as part of the grade. That really stunk.
Since triathlons are usually in the early morning you would think that it is best to train in the morning so that your bio cycles get used to that. I am sure that will help. I really have not had much trouble with that. I just make sure that in the weeks before a big race I get my sleep and establish a pattern. When I raced in Kona I really concentrated on going to bed early the week before the race. I would even go swim at 7:00 AM days before the race get used to that start time.
So I am not advocating this night training for sure but I managed to integrate it into my life and survived. Maybe some of you out there can post your experience. For sure training at night can be dangerous in many places and if you are a woman it may not be the smartest thing to do. Fortunately I have not had any trouble, I usually scare more people than scare me.
My running is back in form, my ankle does not hurt at all after the first 5 minutes of running. So I am crossing my fingers to stay healthy and trouble free from here on out. I plan on doing a half marathon in April and some 5K and 4 mile races starting in February. I have to get serious.