Why You Dread Night Running (And What to Do About It)

One of my core philosophies is this: your brain is the best tool you have. There's always a way to use it to help you solve any problem and make your goals easier to reach.

Night running is a perfect example.

If you dread trying to stay awake during a night section, this is for you. And if you love night running - same thing. Because you can love it and still hit an unexpected wall with it in a race. I have.

What most runners do when night becomes a problem is: use a pacer, latch onto another runner, or failing those solutions, hope they can white-knuckle their way through it. And when that doesn't work, they blame themselves. They think something is wrong with them.

The result? They fear night running even more. And even start avoiding races with significant night components.

That's the real problem - not the night itself. It's taking something that's a challenge and turning it into a feature of ultras you dread. Fearing it before the race even starts. Deciding it's something that will stop you instead of being a problem to solve.

The real solution is - to actually solve it.

Learn why night is a problem. Then find ways to use your mind to help. Your brain is always a tool - in every situation - and there are always ways you can think about something differently can to give you an advantage.

Here's the fact about night running: your circadian rhythm is telling you to sleep. That's the physical reality, and there are physical strategies to help with it, like caffeine.

But there's also a mental side that doesn't get talked about.

At night, you have no sense of the passage of time because you don't see change. It's just dark- the same dark - for hours. During the day, you have constant mental cues: the sun rising, moving overhead, and the light shifting - even on a cloudy day. At night, those cues disappear. That's why it feels like it lasts forever.

That's actually useful information. Because if you understand why it feels that way, you have a starting point for finding mindset solutions to go with your physical ones.

When I’m coaching, I share strategies for staying awake and making the night something to look forward to.

And one common piece of advice in the list is: don't check your watch at night. But if the mindset problem is that you have no sense of the passage of time, you actually do want to check your watch.

The real question is why you're checking it.

When you need your watch to tell you a lot of time has passed - when you need it to make you feel better - you get frustrated when it doesn't. It’s controlling how you think of the night. If only it would give you a better answer you’d like.

You start checking it more often. And you're annoyed that the night isn't moving fast enough. You're depending on what it tells you.

Let’s flip that in a way that works for you.

When you check your watch out of curiosity - when you just want a sense of where you are in time and you're genuinely okay with whatever it says - it becomes a tool. You're the one deciding what to think about the number. More time at night could mean more miles covered in cooler temps. Something you’re glad to have.

Same watch. Same night. Completely different experience.

When you understand the part of night running that is a mindset problem and use your mind to solve it, you win.

You stop fearing the night because you have control of that part. You may still need and benefit from other tools, but you don’t have to dread the night anymore. You have more control over it than you thought.

You stop needing the night to pass faster than it does. You know it will pass.

You might even start to see more night hours as an advantage.

And from here, you can keep finding more ways to make the night work for you.

Your brain got you into this. It can get you through it too.