Despite warm weather and sunshine during the day, it was dark and cold when I finally got out for a run one evening last week. Bundling up against a chill wind, I was beginning to think, as some of you might have at times, “Well, maybe I should just get dinner first and go running later.”

Yeah, sure. As I was dawdling and mulling which way to start out, the sound of laughter came drifting up along the Boulder Creek Path, grabbing my attention, and then there were lights, bobbing up and down like ships rolling on a choppy sea. All at once, out of the darkness, six runners came past along the path, three by three, chatting away, headlamps lighting their way.

The tintinnabulation and warm human presence was entrancing. This must be how Alonso, Ferdinand and the others felt, I thought, in “The Tempest,” hearing the tinkling of Ariel the fairy sprite leading the stranded castaways. I fell in behind the runners, following their pace, my way now lighted and my spirits lifted. There is a different feeling to running in the dark, as if you are running above the ground a bit.

Passing a small tent city erected along the creek just west of the Justice Center, one of its denizens, a Caliban-looking fellow sitting on a log in front of his tent, yelled out in encouragement, “Don’t slack off on your aerobics!”

Good advice, and as I followed the runners up the path to the turn-around, it was clear how running with others makes it so much easier to get a workout in during the winter. Motivation, I thought, is other runners.

“Motivation is multi-layered,” my long-time running buddy, Dave “Smitty” Smith, explained the next day when I told him about my night run and asked what kept him going now that he was no longer training for a race. “There is the sunshine,” Smitty said. “Science tells us how valuable running is for our emotional and mental well-being.”

That echoes the advice John Tayer gave when I ran with his weekly Boulder Chamber Running Club a ways back. Running, said Tayer, head of the Boulder Chamber, “is good for my health; it is good for my mental state; it is good for my discipline.”

For several years, Tayer maintained a running streak that provided powerful motivation and led to some interesting runs, such as the night he and Savory Cuisines owner Bob Sargent ran 5K at 11:30 p.m., getting that day’s run in just in time. Then, a minute past midnight, the duo ran another 5K, getting in the following day’s run, as well. Another night, Tayer ran in -10 degree temperatures on ice-laden streets in Leadville, followed by his wife, Molly, in a warm car, just in case it was needed, in order to keep his streak going.

For many of us, maintaining a running streak was, and is, good motivation to run through the winter. An additional motivation, I’ve found over the years, is the idea of “making our needs our wants.” In other words, we need to run, for myriad reasons, and by emphasizing that I want to run, it somehow gets easier to get out the door.

A streak is not needed to keep to a consistent running schedule, Tayer admitted, saying that his true motivation when “streaking” was to reap the “physical fitness benefits, the satisfaction of a daily discipline, and the free headspace that running provides.”

If you are having trouble with your motivation these winter days, Tayer says don’t make a big deal about starting a streak. Rather, “just get out for your first run and plan for the next day’s run and so on.”

As we reached the Justice Center and I dropped off to finish the short but sweet and satisfying run, the tents were quiet, the path empty. The six runners and their headlamps and buoyant conversation disappeared into the darkness down the path. Soon it was quiet again, dark and cold, and time for dinner.

Follow Sandrock on Instagram: @MikeSandrock.