In the battle of running Vs social life, sometimes something has to give. This week the sacrifice was neither by neither parties, instead my beauty sleep took one for the team. This morning the alarm went off at 6.30 and I pulled myself out of bed, put on my running shoes and before my brain had cought up with what my body was up to, I was pounding the quiet streets of Wimbledon.

This was my first dabble with the idea of running before the little hand has made it’s way past the number 10 and there are definate bonuses. The streets were quiteter, there was less chance of getting run over and less chance of getting heckled by a group of teenagers. The biggest plus to running before work is that I’ve done it now – I can get on with other stuff and don’t have to spend the afternoon talking myself into it, or worrying that it looks like it’s going to rain later.

However, there was one big pitfall to morning running. I’m a ‘morning’ person when it comes to bathroom habits. An hour after getting up I have to ‘go’. As any jogger will tell you, running has a habit of speeding these things up. So the last half mile of this morning’s 3-mile jog was a bit faster than my usual pace as I hot-footed it for the comfort of my own bathroom.

So, in summary, morning jogging could be the way forward as long as it doesn’t take me more than a mile from my front door.