It’s coming soon. Even now, the evenings are getting shorter. Pretty soon, the clocks will roll back. When my alarm goes off, it’ll be black outside. Dark in the house along with the sleepy streets of Germantown.
Most mornings, I run alone. In the summer, that solitude feels like a gift. The air is warm and bright. But by the time November creeps up, it’s dark and cold (at least for a man from Tennessee). If I head out into the dark, log a few miles, and the world still sleeps around me…I’ll be honest, sometimes it feels like it doesn’t do me any good.
Not that I think someone has to see me. It’s more that the cool dark does less to wake me up, and being alone at that hour can feel more isolating than peaceful.
Why Do Dark Mornings Feel So Much Harder?
If getting out of bed feels tougher this time of year for you, too, there’s a reason. Till Roenneberg, a chronobiologist at Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich, coined a term with his colleagues to describe the disconnect between when our internal clocks want us to sleep and when our schedules wake us up: social jetlag.
His research found that a significant majority of people live with at least an hour of that gap during the workweek. Many of us are running on a mild form of jet lag.
Daylight is the main signal the body uses to keep our internal clock. Later sunrise, later signal. That likely part of why we feel so groggy and out-of-sync this time of year. (And why your warm bed is much more compelling than a chilly run.)
Your Unseen Miles Count
You’re not going to get a ribbon for a four-mile run before sunrise on a Tuesday. (Most of the people you’d like to impress are still in bed.)
But you do have yourself, and your decisions. Every time you follow through with what you say you’re going to do, that’s a little more evidence that you’re just that kind of person. You follow-through.
That carries over across other parts of your life. The discipline it takes to run in the cold dark is the same discipline that prepares you for tough conversations. Most of what makes a person good at their work happens where no one ever sees.
How to Make the Dark Months Easier
If telling you that running before sunrise builds character isn’t a compelling enough argument, I do have a few adjustments you can make to take some of the fight out of it.
Get outside light as early as you can. You might want to get up in the dark, finish in the dark, and go back to bed when you’re done. I would encourage you instead to start in the dark, but finish with sunrise. Or drink your coffee on the porch when you’re done. Getting that light makes all the difference for your internal clock.
Move your bedtime. An earlier alarm without an earlier bedtime just exacerbates that social jetlag. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep.
Remove tedious morning decisions. Lay out your gear the night before. In the dark, every choice or spare moment spent trying to track something down is another reason to crawl back in bed.
Have a shorter backup plan. Some mornings, you know it won't happen. A condensed 20-minute loop is better than nothing, and it’s more about keeping the promise to yourself to get out there than how long you spend there.
How You Know Your Habits Are Real
Look, anyone can keep a routine when the mornings are a delight. But between now and March is when you’ll find out if your habit holds.
Decide now what your winter minimum will be. It might be three runs a week, or that 20-minute backup plan. Hold to it until the seasons change and bring the early light with it. If you can keep your word to yourself on a cold, dark morning, through a tough negotiation, a slow quarter, or a demanding season at home, it gets that much easier.
What gets you out the door when the sun’s still down? Drop your best getting-up-before-sunrise tip in the comments.