MORNING GLORY

Empty roads, golden mist, getting a head start on life... training early in the morning has much to recommend it. But just how do you prep for that 5am wake-up call?

- Elizabeth Hufton

Nothing beats the serene beauty of riding just after sunrise. Empty roads stretching out before you, golden mist, a new day full of promise, and the over-arching sense that by ticking that long ride off first thing, you have a head start on life.

For many of us, of course, early morning riding is less about poetry and more about practicality. "It's really hard to plan anything later in the day because stuff crops up - life just gets in the way," says coach Phil Mosley (myprocoach.net). "I also feel that people are just knackered at the end of the day they're hungry, they've got no energy and it just doesn't happen for that reason." Empty roads are hard to dislike, too. It's that much easier to switch off mentally and enjoy a ride if you don't have cars passing too close every two minutes, and less traffic obviously means fewer accidents.

If you're doing your longest rides on a Sunday morning, you have until around 10am before traffic starts to build up (although, as you might expect, anyone training during the week needs to be back by 7am to avoid the worst of it). At this time of year in the UK, not only is daylight on your side early, but riding before breakfast means you make the most of cooler temperatures during our increasingly warmer summers.

For many of us, morning routines are predictable and easy to control, so forming a regular training habit very early in the day means we are more likely to stick to our training plans. And that's good news for any of us taking part in mass events on the road, which tend to be planned with very early start times to avoid bringing the area to a standstill because research has shown that consistently training around the start time of your target event means your body learns to perform better at that time.