Pre-Dawn Run

Oct. 26, 2019

I ran before dawn.

The last several days were brutally packed with high priority missions, and I had no choice but to hit the bed at the earliest possible time after coming home from work instead of hitting the road to refresh myself as I would normally have done, had the schedule not been so insanely hectic. But the worst is over, at least for this week. I have one more day to work, but tomorrow and the following day are off, and I have full two days all to myself. It gave me the will power to get up early, change into athletic gear, get out for a morning run!

Now back to talking about running before dawn. It was awesome. Before dawn is by far the most beautiful time of day. I know it. I've known it for so long. And I will always feel the same way about it. And yet it's the part of a day that has been least utilized by me. For an obvious reason. I come home late. The earliest I can crash is between midnight and 1:00 am at the earliest. I usually hit the sack between 1 and 2. To give myself a medically recommended sleep of 7 to 8 hours I must sleep until 8 or 9 am. It doesn't allow me to make use of the hours before dawn unless I compromise on sleep, which is the last thing I want to do.

So why did I wake up so early? Well, on Saturdays I have an early start anyway. My first lecture is 9:50 am. I've got to be at the office by 9:00 am at the latest. To be there then I must catch the 7:47 train. To catch that train I gotta leave home by 7:35 at the latest. To leave home by then I want to give myself a good one hour to take a shower, eat breakfast, and get changed. So I should be up by 6:30 am. Now if I get up this early, getting up 45 minutes earlier doesn't make much of a difference. So this morning I got up at 5:45 and hit the nearby park to do some laps around the 500 M loop.

The park was deserted when I got there. The track was mushy from heavy rains on the previous day. I had aqua shoes on. But the sole is meshy, so the moisture in the soil reaches my sole. It was nice and cool. As time went by elderly neighbors gathered in twos and threes to take a walk. They looked like herbivores who came to a swamp to drink water before predators became active...

Here and there I spotted interesting formations made of bits of dead weed. They are bands a meter or so in length and less than half a meter in width. They appeared to be bits of weed that floated on puddles created by the rain. Later on when the rain stopped, and water was absorbed into the soil, those bits of weed remained on the surface of the soil, thus leaving a trace that looked like a band or a river of weed...

I feel refreshed now almost two hours after the run. I don't think I can do it often. But I want to do it whenever I can.