A jogger’s story: I hate getting up early but learned to love sunrises

I used to hear them coming every Wednesday morning. Around 9.35am I’d be sitting at my desk when the hum of happy chatter out­side got closer and closer, and a bunch of jolly joggers would pad past my house.

Some running club mates with tight schedules suggested we start at 6am

They looked like fun people, I thought. Wonder if I can join them?

My imminent 50th birthday and middle-aged spread had prompted me to invest in running shoes, but I was only doing a few gentle kilometres around the neighbouring park.

The Wednesday runners, starting from the same park, looked more athletic. So I’d need to get more serious. Which I did – by signing up to a running programme that promised to get me running 10km by the end of eight weeks.

Eight weeks later, I was fitter, if a little fatter – all that jogging gives a gal an appetite – and ready to try strutting my stuff with the Wednes­day crowd.

That’s when I discovered the pack who jogged down our flat street were just warming up to head into the hills. Bloody big hills they are, too. As any Cantabrian who has walked, biked or run up the Rapaki Track will affirm.

But eventually – after many months of runner camaraderie and gentle ribbing – I made it running, albeit very slowly, all the way from our virtually sea-level park to the top of Rapaki. I was damned proud.

This is the point of the narrative when runners often go on to say they caught the bug. They then reel off a list of their first half-marathon here, an epic trail run there, topped off by a New York marathon or the Coast to Coast.

Dear reader, that is not my story.

This is not an inspiring tale of setting running goals and overcoming obstacles to conquer them, one by one. (While I admire those who run half marathons, I also take a perverse pride in having avoided these to date.)

No, my story is one of genuine pride that, after seven years, I’m still a runner. I have been keeping on keeping on, by putting one anti-pronating-shod foot in front of another, usually three or four days a week.

What I am even more smugly proud of is that, in recent years, many of those runs have begun at dawn.

I know for many people – natural larks and busy people – seeing the sunrise is an everyday affair and not just a midwinter novelty.

However, some running club mates with tight schedules suggested we start at 6am. My face portrayed first confusion, then horror as I realised they weren’t joking.

I’m no lark. It is a tribute to how important my running companions had become to me that I gulped and agreed to give it a go.

It is even a bigger tribute to their generous natures that they perse­vered with me. Jumping out of bed in the wee hours was a physiological and psychological inner battle that of­ten defeated me.

I’d “forget” to turn on the alarm or I’d set it for 5.40pm not 5.40am. Then I’d sleep through my mobile frantically ringing as my mates tried to wake me.

After I had stood up a friend on five occasions, to find them ringing and waiting in the dark and cold, I guiltily sent flowers and vowed never to let them down again.

These days, after hitting my alarm, my next step is to text “I’m up” to assure my mates I’m on my way. They accept and tolerate that sometimes a grunted greeting is all I can manage on arriving. I labelled myself the group’s “Eeyore”. (One morning, a mate presented me with Eeyore ears from her kids’ dress-up box.)

I can’t say getting up early has become any easier. I have even whinged to convince the group to start at a more civilised 6.30am.

But, embedded in my sleepy psyche now is how good I usually feel by the end. The “runner’s high” rarely strikes, but my mind and body are relaxed after sharing life’s trivia and trials, as we plod up and down a hill.

And, of course, the sunrises. So many rosy-fingered, orange, pink, purple, turquoise to teal dawns. Some subtle and quiet, others almost clichéd in their breathtaking beauty. Simply said, it’s worth it.