Whether you are just starting out running, or are trying to make the best possible progression in fitness and speed, you might be asking is it better to run in the morning or evening, or perhaps during the day? This is easy to answer if you take into account a few aspects (press one to jump down to something you are most interested in, or read them all):
- Fun – when are your runs more enjoyable?
- Body clock – are you a morning person or a night owl?
- Race Events – if you race, what time does it start?
- Lifestyle – does your life dictate the run time for you?
- Mental approach – disciplined enough to run at set time?
First though, consider that you don’t absolutely need to run at the same time of day on each run. You could mix and match depending on how you feel, family commitments, and the weather. However, there are some pros and cons between running in the morning vs night so let’s discuss. If you have any questions or your own preference of running in the morning vs evening, comment below.
Is running in the morning or evening more fun?
The main reason for running should always be that it’s fun. At least most of the time! Otherwise why bother? So you may find that experimenting with the time of day for your runs can make them more fun. In the morning, your legs aren’t quite as relaxed as they are during the day or in the evening, so you if you have a fast training run planned, perhaps a Fartlek, or Interval training, jumping straight out of bed and doing that session might not feel quite as fun as if you’d waited till later in the day.
If you have the choice, do morning runs at your easy effort and leave the hard effort runs till later in the day. There’s a reduced risk of injury and staying injury free is definitely more fun!
Is it better to run in the morning or evening depending on your body clock?
Science tells us that disrupting your natural body rhythms is counterproductive for most people because it’s really difficult to change them, with a lot of the basis for your Circadian Rhythms being genetic. Are you a morning person or a night owl? How about your parents? If you are a morning person, it makes sense to get your runs done in the morning. If you are a night owl, it makes sense get your runs down later in the day, perhaps in the evening, or lunchtime.
If you normally go to bed late and wake late, then suddenly decide to wake early on a mission to get your runs done, it might seem exciting at first, but after a few weeks, you’ll find it exhausting. You’ll notice that even though you woke yourself early with an alarm, it’s still difficult to get to sleep early at the other end of the day, both due to body clock and due to mental habits. You’ve robbed yourself of sleep.
Similarly, if you are morning person, but have to run in the evenings for a while, you may find it tougher to get to sleep straight afterwards. Again, you’ve missed out on valuable sleep minutes.
Getting enough sleep to recover from your runs and other daily activity is so important. “Recovery is the most important session“. One of your running goals should always be to maximise sleep, so planning whether you run in the morning vs evening based on how much sleep you can realistically achieve should be high on your decision list.
Race Events coming up? Is it a morning, midday or evening race?
Racing performance can improve from specificity of training. If you enter a marathon (moderate effort pace for most), but only ever run at an easy effort or hard effort, the legs won’t know what to do on the day. As you get near the race event, you should include target marathon pace runs in the training. In exactly the same way, you should also practice running at the time of day the race will be. If it starts at 9am, then make your weekend long runs start at 9am, at least once you are about eight weeks out from the race.
If you always get up at 6am and do your run, you are missing out on being able to practice what your legs feel like while running later in the day, and also understanding what your nutrition requirements are when running at other times. Perhaps you regularly get up at 6am, run for 90 minutes and then have breakfast. However, if the race is at 9am and you haven’t practiced eating before your runs, you might struggle, especially if the race involves mostly Zone 3, 4 and 5 efforts (so max effort races up to 4 hours). It might not be so important for longer races like Ultras or people running Marathons in 6 hours, where they are replenishing a lot while running.
Lifestyle might dictate whether you run in the morning vs night.
Think about your family, job and other commitments. Perhaps you have no option but to run at a certain time of day. In which case, don’t stress; just do what you can do in the time available. It’s far better to get a good run done during spare time that really works for you, rather than stressing about trying to stuff a low quality run into a small time slot, and leaving you even more stressed afterwards about whether it was beneficial!
Does your mental approach to effort sway when you should run?
Stop and think about your discipline level for a moment! Are you the sort of person that says “I’ll do that later today” and succeeds in doing it later? Or will you let it slip to tomorrow, or the next day? This might dictate when you should aim to do most of your runs. If your discipline is poor, getting the run done earlier in the day, shortly after waking up, might be the best plan. You’ll feel good because you achieved early.
Note that I’m not talking about mindset here. It’s rare that runners are always in the right mindset to do a run. But a disciplined runner will get the job done anyway, regardless of mindset. It easier to be disciplined at the start of the day while rested, than later where the trials of the day might erode what little discipline you have, due to tiredness and anything else that might have got you down during the day.
Hope that helps!
You should now have a better idea about how to plan when your runs will be. Will they all be at the same time? Or will you vary throughout the week. Enjoy!
