Early Mornings

On a normal day my alarm goes off at 5:30.  I find this to be repulsive, but after a while I guess you get used to it.  On Tuesday I heard that it was supposed to rain all afternoon on Wednesday.  I know myself well enough to know that I would have an incredibly hard time convincing myself to get out the door for my mile in the pouring rain.  I figured I'd set my alarm a few minutes early and get it over with before work.

When my alarm went off I dragged my butt out of bed, put on the clothes I had so thoughtfully laid out the night before and headed out the door after a quick sip of water.  My Garmin decided to take forever to get satellites and when it finally did, I got the worst side cramp ever.  It was a slow, painful mile.  I decided that perhaps morning running was not for me.  As it turned out, the sun was shining all afternoon.  It was nice to have my mile over with, but I was kind of mad that I woke up early for that.

Then yesterday the news kept talking about the terrible storm that was coming.  I decided that waking up early again was better than running in torrential downpours, gusting winds, and possible tornadoes.  So, once again, I laid out my clothes, set my alarm and woke up early.  It seemed like it was going to go well.  My Garmin gained satellites quickly and I didn't have a side cramp.  Life seemed ok.  Then after about 4 minutes I looked down and while the time had started somehow the mileage hadn't?  So weird.  It had never done that before.  Maybe it was mad at me for waking it up early two days in a row.  (Just a side note, the weather was terrible on my way home from work, but shortly after way sunshine and happiness.)

Tomorrow I will be sleeping in (ha) so that I can run at least 3 miles.  I really don't want to wake up in the 4 o' clock hour so I will be running after work.  As fun as it is being able to say that I'm running every day, I really am running way less than I should be.  I've been taking the easy way out and pretty much only running a mile.  I've gotten in some decent strength moves (think random crunches, push ups, squats, etc), but I need to be building up some mileage so I can start thinking about that November half!

Hope everyone's having a happy (storm free!) week!

For any other runners setting their alarms early check out this story from Runner's World :-)  Drink up!