The alarm went off at 6:15. I was already awake, staring at the ceiling, watching the wavy antique glass in my bedroom window catch the first hint of pre-dawn gray. My right hip was talking—that stiff, familiar ache that means I slept wrong or I'm getting old or both.

Coffee could wait. The run couldn't start like this.

Downstairs, the radiator was clanking its morning song, that rhythmic knock-knock-knock that sounds like someone's trapped inside the pipes. The hardwood floors were cold under my bare feet, worn smooth in the center where a hundred years of footsteps had walked the same path from the stairs to the kitchen.

I rolled out the mat—navy blue, five years old, bought at a sporting goods store closing sale. Nothing fancy. Just a barrier between me and the floor.

The first stretch is always the worst. Your body's still locked from sleep, rigid with cold, resistant to the idea of movement. But you do it anyway, because the alternative is starting the day broken. —  Tom Richardson

I started with the hip—on my back, knee to chest, the stretch pulling through the tight muscle. Not gentle, but not forcing. Just persistent. Ten breaths. The kind of counting that makes you focus on something other than how much it hurts.

Outside, Front Street was still dark. Through my front window I could see Bill's porch light—always on, even at this hour. He'd be up soon, shuffling around his kitchen in that threadbare flannel robe, making coffee in his ancient percolator that sounds like it's about to explode.

I switched sides. Left hip, knee to chest. This one was easier—always is. Bodies aren't symmetrical. We compensate, adjust, favor one side until the other side screams for attention.

Next: cat-cow. I learned this from a YouTube video three years ago, after I pulled something in my lower back hauling lumber. The video was led by a woman in perfect lighting with a perfect mat in what looked like a perfect studio. I was in my living room, confused about which way my spine was supposed to curve, feeling ridiculous.

Yoga people talk about "finding your edge"—that place between comfort and pain where growth happens. But as a contractor, I know edges. They're where you cut yourself if you're not careful. —  Tom Richardson

But the back stopped hurting. So I kept doing it. Cat-cow became part of the routine, along with the hip stretches and the hamstring thing where you lie on your back and pull your leg toward your chest with a strap. Except I use an old tie because I don't own a yoga strap and I'm not buying one.

Jacob showed up once at 6:25, ready to run, and found me on the floor in child's pose. He stood in the doorway—I don't lock my front door—and said, "You do yoga?"

"I stretch."

"That's yoga."

"It's stretching."

"You're literally in a yoga pose right now."

I didn't argue. Just finished the stretch, rolled up the mat, grabbed my shoes. We ran our usual route—Front Street to River Road, along the Ohio, back through town. He didn't mention it again, but the next week he left a printout on my porch: "10-Minute Morning Yoga for Runners."

The thing about routines is they creep up on you. One day you're just trying to fix a pulled muscle, and three years later you're on the floor every morning, moving through poses you can't name, calling it something else so you don't have to admit you've become the kind of person who does yoga. —  Tom Richardson

6:31 AM. Downward dog. This one still feels awkward—my hamstrings are too tight, my shoulders too stiff. I can't get that perfect triangle shape the YouTube instructors make look effortless. But I can hold it for five breaths without my wrists screaming, which is better than last year.

The radiator knocked again. Outside, a car passed—early shift at the hospital, probably. Terri or Elena heading in before sunrise. I used to think I was the only one up this early. Then I moved to Front Street and realized half the neighborhood is awake before six, moving through their own quiet rituals before the day officially starts.

Pigeon pose. Right leg forward, left leg back, sitting into the stretch that always makes me think my hip is going to snap. It won't—hasn't yet. But it always feels like a possibility. This is the edge Jacob talks about. The place where you're not sure if you're helping or hurting, but you breathe through it anyway.

I thought about Sarah's classes. Emma goes. Rachel. Even Bill showed up once, sat on a chair in the back, did modified versions of everything. He lasted twenty minutes before his knees gave out. "Too old for this nonsense," he said afterward, but he was smiling.

Maybe I'd go sometime. Maybe.

But probably not. Because this—the ten minutes alone, the cold floor, the radiator knocking, the slow unlocking of a body that's carried tools and lifted lumber and run too many miles on aging joints—this is mine. Private. Unwitnessed. —  Tom Richardson

6:38 AM. One more stretch—seated forward fold, reaching for toes I can't quite touch. My lower back protests, my hamstrings burn, but I breathe. Five counts in, five counts out. The discipline of it, the ritual, the same movements in the same order every morning.

This isn't about flexibility. It's about showing up. Doing the work before anyone sees. Making sure the body that has to function all day gets its ten minutes of attention first.

I rolled up the mat, tucked it behind the couch where it lives. Put on running shoes, grabbed my water bottle, checked my watch. 6:42 AM. Jacob would be on my porch in three minutes, right on time, like every Tuesday and Thursday.

The hip felt better. Not perfect—never perfect. But functional. Ready. The kind of ready that comes from small, consistent acts of maintenance that no one sees and no one needs to know about.

Rachel asked me once why I run so early. "Why not sleep in, run at lunch?" I didn't have a good answer. Just: "This is when I run." Same reason I stretch at 6:23. Same reason I fix things without being asked. Same reason I salt Bill's sidewalk when it snows. This is just what I do. —  Tom Richardson

Jacob's footsteps on the porch. His knock—two quick raps, the signal that means "ready when you are."

I opened the door. Cold December air, still dark, the river somewhere beyond the houses carrying its eternal current south. Jacob was stretching against the porch railing, doing that quad pull he always does.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

We started down Front Street, our breath visible in the cold, shoes hitting pavement in that familiar rhythm. My hip held. My back didn't protest. Everything worked the way it was supposed to, which is all you can ask from a 45-year-old body that gets ten minutes of floor time before dawn.

Jacob didn't mention the stretching. I didn't mention the yoga class I wouldn't attend. We just ran, the way we always do, through the quiet pre-dawn streets of a town that's still sleeping.

But somewhere in the rhythm of steps, in the cold air and the darkness and the river running parallel to our route, I thought: maybe this is what they mean by practice. Not the poses or the names or the classes. Just the showing up. The ten minutes you give yourself before giving the rest of the day to everything else.

6:23 AM. Ten minutes. Worn hardwood floors and a five-dollar mat. Not yoga. Just stretching. Just showing up. Just the quiet work of keeping a body running. —  Tom Richardson

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