A few more hours of sleep and it would have made sense, but even by my low standards, 12:30am is too early to get out for a run. I navigated the sleeplessness something like this.
"What? Too early. Maybe if I am not back asleep in 20mins I'll go for my run"
"But that is 20 minutes I could be running rather than wondering if I am going to fall asleep. It would be disappointing to still be up at 12:50 and have nothing to show for it"
"If I do fall back asleep, I'll probably be up at 5am and then there won't be time to go back to sleep at 6am"
"Ok 10 mins. If I'm not asleep in 10 minutes I'll put on my miles. I need a reset anyway because I ran early afternoon today... errr... yesterday"
I stay very still for 5 minutes. My brain drifts toward how I can't sleep despite efforts to trace through my go to sleeping thoughts; visions of the ocean sunrises during family vacation, amazing Catholic church's I visited, photo walks in the woods.
"This isn't working. I'm going for a run."
Clearly when my mind wakes up I might as well not fight the feeling to lace up and hit the streets no matter what time it is.
48 Minutes and 4 seconds later I'm back from a weird 6 mile set of loops. I shower and lay down with a weighted blanket. The next thing I know my wife's alarm is going off which means it must be 6:25am while I'm dreaming some dream I can't remember now.
I'm not sure I would "be a runner" if it weren't for the sleeplessness. If I got a solid 8 consecutive hours of sleep every night it would easier for me to just toss in the towel and skip runs because other daytime priorities would seep into my day. But in the mornings whether 12:30am or 3am or 4:30am my mind and body are in a place that requires some kind of physical exertion before they are satisfied with settling back down again. Nothing else is going on at those wee hours. Running seems like a reasonable way to spend the time.
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