Again, I have utterly failed to keep to my desire to post more often than once a week or less. Add that to the list of things I am going to have to work on in the coming month. The top thing is getting a reliable and functional running schedule established. I think I picked a poor time to start really training (winter) because I have had trouble getting out the door in the mornings during the work week.
Let me be totally honest when I say that I hate getting up in the morning. I’m a night owl and Ihave always hated mornings. The ironic part is that I like the solitude of the morning and the calmness of that time of day. But I also like the calmness of 2 AM too. In college I rarely went to bed before 1AM, and that trend carried over into graduate school in London. Now that I’m working, of course, my bedtime has moderated considerably and I am usually in bed by 11:30 on work nights. However, this does not make it any easier to get up in the morning for work. That trouble is only compounded by having to wake up almost 90 minutes earlier if I want to get a run in before work.
Most people get to work around 9 AM or so. Most of the people at my firm get to work between 7:30 and 8, including me. Thus, it makes morning running that much earlier. Thankfully I can walk to work, otherwise it would be even worse! As it stands, the combination of waking up early, the darkness of winter mornings, and the general crappy weather that comes with January and February in Baltimore make it damn near impossible to get out of bed in the morning. The last few weeks have been particularly horrible. When it’s relatively warm outside (i.e. mid 30’s to 40’s), the wind is blowing and it feels like 20 or it’s raining, or both. The rest of the time, it actually IS 20 outside and the wind is blowing. These are not impossible conditions to run in, I know. But at 5:30 AM, with another 90 minutes of darkness before the first sliver of dawn creeps over the horizon, it’s very daunting.
Of course there’s always running at the gym, but I get so bored with that. Plus, it’s not necessarily the cold that keeps me from running, although running in 15 mph winds can be harrowing. It’s the combination of darkness, cold and the ungodly hour that kills me. If it was light outside, I think it would be markedly easier to motivate myself. Running at the gym would just further discourage me, I think. I could run in the middle of the work day, but then I’d be taking two showers a day, which is another thing I don’t like doing. Plus it would take a good 90 minutes out of my work day and be a general nuisance. I could also run after work, but I’m so tired after work that all I want to do is come home, eat dinner and sit on the couch and read or watch TV and relax. So, I am left with the only time of the day open for running on a daily basis: the morning.
This is all by way of saying that I need to suck it up and dig deeper to get out of bed because I have under 6 weeks left before the National Half Marathon and next weekend is an 11-miler for which I need to be ready. Once winter starts to abate and the morning temps warm up a little more and the wind goes away, I think it’ll be much easier. Unfortunately, that won’t happen for another month, and even then, it’s not going to be like living in Miami.
As for the rest of this week, I think it’s still salvageable. I have to take Annie to the train station tomorrow so she can get up to New York for an audition, so I will be back in time to head out for a run before work. I’ll already be awake so I have no excuse not to head out. Saturday is going to be cold, but not arctic, so I think I’ll be able to get another 5 miles in. Sunday is a nice and easy 8-miler, and since we have Monday off for President’s Day, I’m hoping I’ll feel good enough to hit another 5 miles then as well.
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