<p>Let’s talk about when is the best time during the day to run.</p><p>I found a really awesome article from Buffer. They have an article titled Why Most Olympic Records are Broken in the Afternoon and your Body’s Best Time for Everything.</p><p>This article is all about timing, “one thing we’re obsessed about here at buffer is obviously the best time to share on social media”, and they talk about the best times to do other things as well. When they talk about running they actually do a really good job of talking about athletics here, so I wanted to touch base on this a little bit. Typically for most people I’m a big fan of morning runs. There are many reasons that in general running in the morning is going to be ideal, however technically speaking the afternoon or the evening is actually better for performance for athletics.</p><p>So in the article they talked about how most almost every world record in track and field’s and cycling events have been broken in the afternoon and evening. Is this because most events are done in the afternoon or evening or is it because we perform better in the afternoon or evening? I’m not sure it could be with scheduling-wise with the Olympics and World Championships that they happen to be in the afternoon because you can’t schedule all your events in the morning. When you look at running, like the Berlin Marathon, it’s in the morning so it’s an interesting thing to think about. Anyway, this article goes into some details about how body temperature peaks later in the day, giving us a natural type of warm up throughout the day versus in the morning when our core temp our body temporal temperatures are lowest. Blood pressure can also be a factor in our exercise routines. In the first three hours after we wake up our blood pressure rises the most out of any point in the day, our blood vessels open up more to allow for blood flow later in the day as well. So they’re saying as your blood flows better in the afternoon and evening so you can move oxygen and nutrients around your body better after you’ve been up for a few hours. In the evenin, however,r exercise was found to reduce blood pressure by 10 to 20 percent and then exercising in the morning was found in an experiment to either increase blood pressure or not make a difference. Physical performance is higher and risk of injury is lowered between 3 and 6 p.m. according to Michael Smolenski who wrote with The Body Clock Guide to Better Health.</p><p>Muscle strength tends to peak between 2:00 and 6:00 p.m. and additionally our lungs function 17% more effectively after 5 p.m. than at midday according to one study of 4,700 patients. </p>
When is the best time to run? When do you prefer to run? →
Click to Tweet