Tuesday, September 1, 2015

When does 5am get easier?


It's September, which means now the Baltimore Half Marathon is officially next month. Also, my child turns one this month, but I'll sob about that later.


I selected a training plan to follow, intending to be prepared, because sometimes I like to be funny. 

  • The training plan has speed work. Guess how much of that I've done? (Spoiler - zero.)

  • The training plan calls for strength. I've done a tad of that. One workout each week has involved lifting something heavier than a running shoe. I did No More Trouble Zones on Sunday. I'm still sore. 

  • The training plan calls for weekday runs. I really have no idea how long they should be because I stopped checking, but it's safe to say longer than I've been doing. I've been aiming for 3-3.5 miles (I'm in no position to ignore that extra little half mile), four mornings per week. All on the treadmill. That's not my aim, but the promise of TV is the only thing that gets me out of bed at 5am. Dying in the humidity during my run before dying in the humidity at work all day...no. 


Sleep is just so precious and rare these days.

Although my memory is completely shot, I don't recall waking up at 5am to exercise ever being easy. But, I do believe I got to a point where it was, at least, the routine, and my body was kind of used to it. If that's true, I am not at that point again yet this school year. 

  • The training plan calls for long runs. This is the one thing I'm sort of succeeding at. Over the last three weeks, I've done a 6, 7, then 8 miler, the latter two with the stroller. Thank goodness I have friends who will join me, which is probably the only way these runs are happening. 
All this has averaged out to about 20 miles a week plus one additional non - running workout, and I'm comfortable with that.

Some other things to consider when training for a race:

  • Hydration: Nailing it.

This child can chug a bottle of water in under 5 minutes, but luckily he's learning to share.

  • Nutrition: Failing, but in a delicious way. I just binge ate these amazing chocolate chip cookies that my friend Emily mailed me. 
  • Sleep: Failing miserably
  • Stretching: Get real. I refuse to wake up before 5am until I get consistent sleep the rest of the night, although probably not even then.
One time I thought maybe I'd return to marathons or even ultras after having children. HA. Maybe in 18 years. But I do feel confident that I won't die during the half marathon, even if I'm embarrassingly slow.

What time do you wake up, and how much do you hate it? Weekdays, 5am, so, so, so much, weekends, whenever Dalton wakes up (usually between 6 and 7am) and it's so glorious and relaxing (meant non-sarcastically, it really is).

5 comments:

  1. I'm up at 5:30 to run on week days and it's not bad considering I go to bed at like 8:30 or 9 every night. Weekends, it's usually 6:30ish if Leif is feeling generous and letting us sleep. He usually plays quietly in his crib in the morning anyway so who knows when he actually gets up.

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  2. I'm usually up by 7 am on weekdays (and am getting away with rolling into work by 9:40 these days, yay pregnancy!) but I don't generally leave the office until after 7 pm, and don't get home until 8 or later. I'm pretty sure NYC operates on a totally different life schedule than the rest of the world.

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  3. I am usually awake by 3:30 and out of bed by 4. sometimes I am productive and sometimes I am not... like this morning I am busy reading blogs. WHY am I up so early. I don't know. My daughter was never a sleeper and for many years she woke up at 5 am except fall back time change had her waking up at 4 am.... now she sleeps in and I still wake up. Kids ruin your life. I go to bed at 8 when the kids do.

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  4. I'm pretty sure your embarrassingly slow time will be like my normal time, and I don't have a kid...so there's that. You'll do great :)

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  5. I get up at 5am to work out. Sometimes I wake up 2 min before my alarm. Those are banner days.

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