just another running mom: Early Mornings

One of the hardest parts of marathon training is long runs. They are hard to do and very hard to plan. They take 2-4 hours and I get bored easily so you need to vary your route. I don't like carrying water so the planning needs to include where the water/gatorade will be dropped as well as who is going to do the drop. And anytime you are scheduling more than 2 people it is always tricky - especially with all very busy running moms. However, there is nothing I love more than spending hours running with the girls. We chat about everything and nothing the entire time. No music needed. Running mile after mile after mile with someone creates serious bonds so I do everything I can to get as many people as possible on long runs and never run alone if I can help it. Plus it's safer.

This weekend schedules were a bit crazy. I have a swim meet to cheer at tomorrow morning and others are running in Cooper's Run. So we opted to do our 14 miler today instead of tomorrow which means we needed to be done by 7:30 am (darn those husbands having jobs!) So the alarm clock went off at 4:45 am - I try very hard to never set my alarm before 5:00 am but it had to be done today. We left for our run at 5:00 am and ended up having a great 14 mile run.

I am always so glad that I woke up early once my run is done. As we were finishing today it was just getting hot out. I've pretty much always been a morning person. In high school and college I was young and tough enough to stay up late so I would work out in the evenings but since I had kids it's been early morning for me.

Today on Pinterest I saw this and thought it had some good tips if you want to become a morning person. The biggest downfall to being a morning person is that if you're going to get up every day in the 5:00 hour you have to go to sleep early. Luckily, my kids are still young so they go to bed at 9:00 pm- I'm not sure how I will survive when they are staying up late. I can't keep my eyes open past 10:00 :)