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You said you'd run before work. The alarm went off. You did not run.

It's rarely the running that stops you. It's lying there at 5:58 doing math about whether there's still enough time, and deciding there isn't. By the time you've finished the argument you've lost twenty minutes, so now you're right. A backward plan settles it the night before, so the alarm is just the alarm.

A 45 minute run costs another 80 minutes

The forty-five minutes on your calendar is only the running. Then you're standing in the kitchen drinking water, waiting to stop sweating so the shower is worth taking, and after the shower there's the breakfast you now need more than usual. Add a real warm-up and it comes to about eighty minutes wrapped around the run itself. Plan for the run alone and you'll blow past your leave-by time every day until you stop running.

Set your be-at-work time and find out what the alarm has to be

Ready Time works backward from when you need to be at your desk, which usually produces an alarm earlier than you'd like and much better to learn at 9pm than at 6am. Then take the decisions out of the morning: kit on the chair, shoes by the door, watch charged, route already picked. Getting dressed half asleep should mean putting on the clothes that are already there. If the plan says 5:30 and 5:30 is genuinely not happening, shorten the run and keep the alarm you'll actually obey.

Should you run in the morning before or after breakfast?

For an easy run under about an hour, coffee and maybe half a banana is enough, and plenty of people run fasted with no trouble at all. Past an hour, or for anything hard like intervals or a tempo, 150 to 300 calories of simple carbs 30 to 45 minutes beforehand tends to make the session go better. The real breakfast goes after, ideally within an hour of finishing. Whichever way you go, sort it out on a training day.

What to do before a run in the morning

Drink a glass of water, get some light on, and warm up more than feels necessary, because your muscles have been horizontal for eight hours and are stiffer than they'll be at any other point in the day. Five minutes of brisk walking plus leg swings covers most of it, and running the first mile slower than goal pace covers the rest. Skipping the warm-up is the most common way a morning run turns into a morning injury.

Morning Run
5 min Alarm & feet on the floor 6:00 AM
5 min Kit on (laid out last night) 6:05 AM
10 min Water, coffee & half a banana 6:10 AM
5 min Warm up: walk & leg swings 6:20 AM
45 min Run 6:25 AM
10 min Cool down, water & stretch 7:10 AM
25 min Shower & get dressed 7:20 AM
20 min Breakfast & pack bag 7:45 AM
25 min Commute 8:05 AM
Morning Run 8:30 AM
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Ready Time

You know what you need to do. Ready Time tells you when.

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