Seeing cities by running them has become a bit of an obsession for me over the past ten years. Provided the area is safe for a single female runner, I like to try and get out for early morning runs – I see the city from a different perspective and it fights jet lag.

A study was released late last year by Cardiff University which looked at how we experience time. As lead researcher Dr. Marc Buehner said, “Here we can show that perceptions are subject to systematic distortions depending on people’s causal beliefs – if people believe that they, or someone or something else, are in charge, time appears to pass faster. In contrast, just knowing when something will happen, in the absence of causality, did not change time perception.”

From anecdotal evidence on this topic, gathered during my weekend in New York City, I would tend to concur.

I went on a run early Sunday morning, just after dawn. Central Park was too far from my hotel, so I decided to try out a run I found online. It was supposed to look like this:

From: Melissa at fitnessnycblog.com