Good morning to you, and you, and you and....

Sadly, Kansas City is not likely to be a contender for America’s fittest city anytime soon.
A cause for even greater sadness: the city has been known to garner a high ranking on the list of the fattest cities.

Check out these Men's Fitness magazine rankings from a couple years ago:

THE TOP 10 FATTEST CITIES of 2006 (with their 2005 ranking in parenthesis):
1. Chicago (5)
2. Las Vegas (9)
3. Los Angeles (21 fittest)
4. Dallas (6)
5. Houston (1)
6. Memphis, Tenn. (4)
7. Long Beach, Calif. (20)
8. El Paso, Texas (11)
9. Kansas City, Mo. (18)
10. Mesa, Ariz. (15)

When traveling to places such as Denver and San Francisco, the vivid difference jumps out right away with a simple glance. Denver’s Washington Park, for example, has been jam packed with walkers, runners, Rollerbladers and bicyclists when I have gotten in my miles there while on a road trip.

Unless it’s an organized race, I rarely see that volume of fellow runners out and about when I am closer to home.

That’s why I was surprised this morning when I encountered so many more runners than usual. I extended my route into Kansas City’s Brookside neighborhood and onto the Trolley Trail as I logged an eight-mile training run. I was passing oncoming runners and encountering others on the trail and surrounding streets throughout the run.

Granted, it was not a necessarily a huge number of runners. Just a lot more than the half dozen at most that I usually see.

It was dark – gloriously chilly (Hooray for the arrival of Fall!!) – and barely past 5 a.m. That time of the morning remains reserved for the few, the dedicated, the crazy?, and the near-nocturnal fitness freaks. It’s the only time of the day I have any hope of controlling. In the evening, often times I get delayed at the office, re-directed to one of the Ozling’s extracurricular activities or engaged in preparing the family’s dinner so an end-of-the-day workout isn’t practical for me.

I enjoy the opportunity to put in some miles and get lost in my thoughts in the early hours of the day. Saturday’s are the time I like to gather with a larger group and chat while on a longer run.

So while I am not necessarily looking for conversation on my weekday mornings, it is nice to see evidence in the form of fellow runners that I am not totally whacked out for stumbling from a comfortable bed to work up a sweat and pound the pavement.

The optimist in me wants to believe that the additional runners I saw this morning indicate a growing fitness-embracing trend in the Kansas City area. If we can keep it up, maybe the next time some fitness magazine crunches the numbers, we could shed our ignoble ranking.