My love/hate of 6 am runs

Now I'm usually in my mid week training block (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) because I have rest days on Monday as well as Friday, so this makes for a pretty nice block in the middle of the week which allows me to go run in the morning, and then continue on with the day.  Although lets be perfectly honest here, it's more a hate relationship when I actuall have to get up before the run, and usually about the first half of the run, and then on the second half and after the run I'm loving that I went to go run.

This week I actually managed to hit all three runs, and I can't remember the last time I've done all my runs in the morning, but my legs were feeling pretty tired this morning when I went for my last run.  But let's rewind a bit to recap this week.  Mondday was a rest day so I got to sleep in.

Tuesday was a 6 am run day, but it was only the first of three in a row.  I use this app called sleep cycle that measures your sleeping patterns and then wakes you up in a 30 minute before your set time up to your set time.  I've found that in situations where I need to be actually coherant or I'm not getting enough sleep I'll use this as my alarm along with another one as backup.  It essentially taps into your iPhone/iPod's accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure movement, the awesome thing is that I've found that when it goes off you can slap the bed in the general area of where it is lieing on your bed and it'll snooze.  So..... cue ringing..... followed by a slap *BOOM* and alarm goes silent.  Snooze function kicks in for a bit, and rings again, and I slap it again, silences and then comes right back ringing. It's at this point I realize my 30 minute window before my set time has already been exauhsted, I guess it's time to get up and go running.  It was actually quite an enjoyable run especially because it was nice and warm and no need for anything more than shorts and a t shirt.

Wednesday morning was a pleasant surprise because I actually managed to drag a friend of mine Lisa out to run with me at 6 am.  Not gonna lie you know you have great friends when they're willing to get up at an ungodly hour to go run with you.  I actually kinda jokingly asked her the night before, hey want to go running with me tommorow at which she actually responded yes.  So here we go running, we decided to do an our and back and she'd just turn back a little bit earlier. And away we went.  I thought she was going to turn back at 30 minutes and I'd finish my distance and then turn back and start running her down.  It's just like the peleton trying to catch a breakway.  Only problem is that I realized that when I started turn around and run back she was already a mile ahead, which probably meant that in the remaining three miles I'd have to make up a mile on her, soooooooo running like over 3 minutes faster per mile than her.  Unfortunately I can't sustain that kind of pace (7 min miles) for much more than 3 miles, because I'm running flat out, and that's fresh.  Long story short, I didn't catch her because she turned back after 26 minutes.  But anyhow it was a good run, and the cool thing about running so early is that even when you're done you're run you still have the entire day ahead of you.

We're both way too happy for this time in the morning

Today's run was probably the slowest of the bunch, I'm pretty sure I ran the first mile with my eyes closed because I was pretty tired and I felt like I was pushign hard but it didn't say I was going all that fast.  Me thinks it's time for a rest day, but unfortunately I have been talked into spending 4 hours on my ass...... no not sitting on my couch but riding so I'll let you know how that goes.

~Cheers