Your evening run is about to go dark

By Raph · October 26, 2026

The clocks went back in Europe on Sunday, and they go back in the US this Sunday, November 1. If you run after work, most of those runs are now in the dark until March.

The dark itself is manageable. What costs runners the winter is the decision at 6pm, standing at the window, about whether tonight is a night to run. Make that decision once, this week, and the evenings take care of themselves.

Set the rule before the evening. Thomas Nobbs, a 2:09 marathoner, explained on Human Performance Outliers, episode 500 that he moves a workout indoors when the humidity is over 90 percent or the wind is over 20 km/h. Fixed numbers took the indecision out of his day, because he had been chasing a perfect workout that does not exist. Yours will be different. Pick them now: below a certain temperature, or on a road with no sidewalk and no light, the run moves to the treadmill or to the morning.

Give each run a place.

• The long run goes in weekend daylight. It is the run that needs the most time, light and good footing, and Saturday morning has all three.
• Workouts go somewhere you can see: a treadmill, a lit track, a lit loop in a park. A tempo on a dark, uneven road turns into a run about your footing.
• Easy runs are the ones that work in the dark. Run them by feel, at a pace you could talk at, and ignore the watch: pace on unlit ground runs slower and says nothing about your fitness.
• On a short evening, run short. Twenty easy minutes still counts, and it keeps the week intact.

Be seen from your ankles and wrists. In a test on a closed road at night, 21 young drivers watched a pedestrian cross 135 meters ahead and judged which way they were walking. With reflective material on the moving joints, the drivers were right 80 percent of the time. With it on the torso only, 53 percent. In black clothing, 33 percent (Black et al., 2021). The pedestrian was walking, not running, and the point carries: a vest says something is there, and moving ankles and wrists say it is a person and where they are going. Add a light, and check it lasts on the setting you actually use.

What your coach does with this. Tell Runsense the evenings are dark now and you will run before work on weekdays, with the treadmill on Thursday. It reworks your plan around those hours and tells you what moved and why. Your runs land on the days you said. If you are building toward a spring race, the plan still works back from that race date, so the winter weeks are part of the build and not a pause in it. If you haven't tried it, start your free 14-day trial.