six miles at sunrise

So I guess now I can say that I know what it's like to run six miles at sunrise.

What a week. I've been up at 5:15 am every day to do my training because it's the only time all day I can fit it in. Monday and Tuesday were five miles each, Wednesday was cross training, and this morning I ran six miles. Let me tell you what happens when my cell phone alarm goes off at 5:15 am.

I shut it off.

Then, four minutes later, my actual alarm clock goes off across my room. And I am FORCED to jump out of bed and shut it off before it wakes up my roommates.

Then I force myself to eat a banana and drink some water that I have stashed by my bed for the sole purpose of waking me up. I swallow my supplements and the sugar in the banana hits me and I am somewhat more awake.

I have gone to sleep in a clean sports bra and running clothes, so all I have to do is put on my knee brace, sneakers, grab my ipod and head out the door.

I turn on my iPhone running app and the sun is still low in the sky. The app uses a GPS to track my mileage and also has a handy map of my route because otherwise I'd get hopelessly lost. I try to take different roads every day. While I'm running, I listen to books on tape and kind of zone out. It took me an hour to complete my run this morning. And afterwards, I felt pretty strong.

So even though I hate waking up that early, I do feel pretty glad that I did once I finish my run. It ALMOST makes up for the fact that I was in some pain today at work. Tomorrow's a rest day though, so I can actually sleep in until 6:30 am and hopefully my muscles will be recovered for the Dreaded Twenty Miler on Saturday morning. I am scared, but I'm trying not to think about it. At least after the Dreaded Twenty Miler our training runs start tapering down again until the marathon so that our bodies are more recovered for the full marathon.

It's weird how in my first blog entry I stated that I ran six miles like it was this huge unbelievable incredible feat, and now it's just like any other day. There's something about progression that makes me hopeful about life.