Early Morning Run

I've been trying to increase the distance of my runs this summer, but with the heat of summer and a busy work schedule, I've had to do the unthinkable:  Get up early to run.

So far it hasn't always been pretty.  Yesterday, the alarm went off at 5am, and by 5:15am I was up and turning off the alarm, then downstairs to make coffee because running without caffeine would only add to the challenge.  Finally by 6am I'm ready to tear myself away from Facebook, gulp down a bowl of chocolate cheerios, get into my running clothes, fill my water bottle, make a protein shake for after the run, and out the door by 6:15.

I’d like to say the run itself was ordinary, except that I started off way too fast and faded to slightly faster than a sane target pace by the end.  It was ideal weather and resulted in a personal best for the route.

Arriving back home after the run, it’s time for a second breakfast of the aforementioned protein shake and a bagel.

Then it’s time to change out of my sweaty clothes and get into my greasy ones and go out into the garage to continue rotating my tires.  This is a simple job I like to do myself, even though the last set of tires I bought included free rotation.  It’s not really about rotating the tires, but performing a periodic check of the tires and suspension bits.  It’s also about spending some non-sedentary time out in the garage as opposed to sitting in a waiting room.  And finally, it’s about making sure the lugs are tightened correctly, so they can be easily removed when you have a flat tire in an inconvenient location.  I have had 3 flat tires in my driving career and each one amounted to about a 15 minute delay.

But I digress, and once again, time runs out before the job is finished, and I must shower and run off to work.  In retrospect, I was up for a little over 4 hours, and got in a total of 2 hours of running and garage time.  It always seems that I end up with a 50-50 split of productive time and “overhead”.  I’d like to get closer to a 75-25 split.  Probably the first step towards that is eliminating the first cup of coffee followed by the wait for it to kick in.  Can I really be outside and running within 30 minutes of the alarm going off?  Time will tell.