Chasing the Morning Sun

As I write this on Sunday morning, I am enjoying my last day off for the next 4 months. Football practice starts tomorrow and school resumes shortly after. That means something school related every day until Thanksgiving (yes, even every Sat and Sun).

My challenge becomes, how do I continue the running schedule I've so diligently stuck to this summer? After reading Joe Stahl's post yesterday called "School, Fitness, How Do I manage..." it got me thinking about how much I'm going to have to re-prioritize my life to keep it up. But, you know what, my health and fitness is worth that effort.

What I've determined is that the best time for me is going to be early, and I mean early (4:30 am) to get my running in. While that thought may terrify some people, I've always kind of been a morning person anyway so it won't be that much of an adjustment.

While it's highly debatable and definitely doesn't fit everyone's schedule, I also believe that doing my cardio before I eat my first meal of the day, helps me stay in better shape.

Here an excerpt from Should You Do Cardio First Thing in the Morning Before Eating by Tom Venuto,

"The argument in favor of fasted early morning cardio goes something like this:

1. When you wake up in the morning after an overnight 8-12 hour fast, your body’s stores of glycogen are somewhat depleted. Doing cardio in this state causes your body to mobilize more fat because of the unavailability of glycogen.

2. Eating causes a release of insulin. Insulin interferes with the mobilization of body fat. Less insulin is present in the morning; therefore, more body fat is burned when cardio is done in the morning.

3. There is less carbohydrate (glucose) "floating around" in the bloodstream when you wake up after an overnight fast. With less glucose available, you will burn more fat.

4. If you eat immediately before a workout, you have to burn off what you just ate first before tapping into stored body fat (and insulin is elevated after a meal.)

5. When you do cardio in the morning, your metabolism stays elevated for a period of time after the workout is over. If you do cardio in the evening, you burn calories during the session so you definitely benefit from it, but you fail to take advantage of the "afterburn" effect because your metabolic rate drops dramatically as soon as you go to sleep.

Research supports this theory. A study performed at Kansas State University and published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise showed that a kilogram of fat is burned sooner when exercise is done in the fasted state in the morning than when it’s done later in the day." (http://www.leehayward.com/am_cardio.htm)

One of the other benefits for me is that I really love the tranquil, quiet, and usually much cooler conditions of a morning run. There is just something very therapeutic for me about running before the sun, and the rest of the world, gets up.

Trust me, there will be plenty of groans from me when that alarms beeps at 4:30 am tomorrow but hopefully I can force myself out of bed by remembering how important my morning runs are to me.

Image:

Run by Sunrise by Leefotos'