The 6am Run Before Anyone Else Is Awake
Running with an 8-month-old in a jogging stroller through Fairmount Park before sunrise — the silence, the dad bod, and the small weird pride of getting it done before the day starts.
My son's neck is finally strong enough to run together. 8 months old. Up until recently the stroller was basically a porcelain situation — no bumps, no jolts, nothing that could rattle his head around. Now he can hold his head up and I can actually move. So now it's 6am and I'm out on the path before the rest of the world is awake.
Fairmount Park is empty in that particular way that only happens early morning. The kind of quiet where you can hear the river if you slow down enough. My son is in the jogging stroller, still half asleep, making small grunting noises that might be contentment or might be a complaint about the early alarm. Hard to tell.
I run alone most mornings, but the same loop at 6:30 has a real community around it if you want one — Bennett and the Fairmount Running Club meet on that path a few days a week and the regulars all know each other. I just haven't been organized enough to make the early group meetups stick.
The dad bod is real.
Eight months of not sleeping through the night. Roberto Clemente Park three times a week instead of the gym. Too tired to care about abs. I keep telling myself this run is the fix — eventually the body will remember what it used to be. This may or may not be true. But it sounds good at 5:45am when I'm putting on running shoes.
What I wasn't prepared for is how much I like the 6am window itself. Before the day starts. Before the meetings. Before the version of me that has to be productive and responsive and all the things I have to be. Right now I'm just a guy running through a park with his kid, and nobody needs anything from us. It's the same window I catch when I have to leave the city — the 30th Street Station at 6am has the same hush before the rest of the building catches up.
My son watches the trees go by with this focused attention that makes me wonder what he's actually seeing. Whether the way the leaves move in the wind is something he's filing away or just noise to him. He's not old enough to remember any of this, but I'm keeping the habit anyway.
Three and a half miles now. Used to be five or six before he was born. Three and a half miles used to feel like nothing. Now it feels like something, which I guess is the point. You take what you can get.
By the time I'm heading back, the park is waking up. A few other runners, some dog walkers, the occasional cyclist who seems mildly annoyed at anyone on foot. My son has fallen asleep again, head tilted slightly to the side, breathing slow. He slept through the whole thing and has no idea this was a choice I made before the sun came up.