The Merits and Demerits of Early Morning Training

One of the interesting aspects of training with the xcottawa.ca racing team is
that because a significant portion of the team works regular office hours
during the day, sometimes, if you want to train together it has to be either
very early or relatively late. On most of the other teams I have been part of
teammates were usually students or basically full-time athletes. In either
case, training at those easy to get ready for times of day (like say 9 or 10
am) was usually possible.

This summer, as in past summers, I am one of the people working a more or less
regular 9 to 5 schedule which at least allows me to experience a bit of the
working person's pain that some of the other people on our team feel all year
round.

My experience with training early in the morning, say between 6 and 8, has
convinced me that it is a good thing to do, but maybe in limited quantities.The
reason for the limited quantities is fairly simple. If you are like most human
beings in today's world, something usually conspires against your best-laid
plans to get to bed early at least a couple of times a week (a phone call from
someone that you have not heard from in a long time like a spouse that left you
because you train too much, a car that breaks down, or an all-important keg
party). I figure that if you get less than the ideal amount of sleep one or
two nights a week, you might be able to compensate for it by going to bed
earlier other nights, or finding time to squeeze in some naps somewhere. If you
sleep too little more often than that people will start asking you what you
have been smoking.

So about twice a week this year I have been doing some kind of workout before
work. For your interest, here is how this week's workout went. Teammate Wayne
Dustin agreed to meet me at 6am to do some rollerskiing on the bike paths. We
were going to be doing slightly different workouts, but he said that he would
have time to bring his video camera to do a couple minutes of video work and
that we could do part of the workout together.