How do you like my beautiful, Instagram worthy, photograph?  It doesn’t feature a nice blue ocean or snow capped mountains, but that’s because they were not on view, when I ran this morning.

If you spend any time on Instagram, you will hundreds of photographs every day, that feature athletes swimming in the ocean, biking in the mountains or running in some amazing city.  While all these photographs are real, they only represent a small portion of the workouts done around the world on any given day.

The good news is that a 50 minute Zone 2 run yields the same results, whether you are running amongst the canyons of Utah or along a neighborhood sidewalk, lit by a headlamp.  Your body doesn’t know the difference. The training effect is the same.

Over the winter, I do a lot of early morning runs in the dark. That is because I live in a place that is quite far north and where daylight hours are limited in winter.  I have a day job, so to get my workouts done, I have to do them early or late in the day, when it’s mostly dark.  While this can be more challenging from a motivational perspective, it doesn’t impact the physiological benefits.

I strongly believe that racing success, begins with disciplined training in the winter.  If that means running in the dark, then I’m going to run in the dark.  After all, not all workouts are glamorous !!

Oh, by the way, I did put that photograph on my Instagram 🙂