I don’t do a lot of my joggling at night but with the sun setting earlier, I’m bound to do a few runs after it has gone down. I have always had the feeling that I was running faster at night, but I just assumed it was because of nervousness at running in the city at night. It turns out, it might be something else.
According to research reported on in the Runner’s World article, the lack of farther distance objects makes it seem like you are running faster. It has to do with your optic nerves and how you processes relative distances.
This does make me wonder if joggling makes it feel like you’re running faster. If your eyes focus on close-up objects and you don’t see far away objects, you might begin to feel like you’re going faster. I suppose that doesn’t apply to my joggling though because I don’t look at the Gballz when I joggle. Interesting thought though.
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I’ve always felt like I run faster at night, too! Which takes me back to the Madison-Chicago relay where I KNOW I was running faster at night!
I think so…
Nights are cooler in Florida so I probably get more speed from the drop in temperature also. Running at night is energizing too, especially when you have some good tunes on iTunes to listen to. But, yeah, I could see how night time makes it appear like you’re running faster. When I run on a golf course that is very dark, with just a headlamp, at some points it feels like you’re flying!