Who Are You and What Have You Done with Raegan?

 

I am not a morning person. Not in the least bit. At the various jobs I've held in my life, everyone at the office knew not to speak to me before 9:00 and expect a verbal response. At one college I worked at, even the guys in the facilities plant were familiar with my reputation of being basically mute first thing in the morning. Even in Kindergarten, back in the days when you only went half a day, my mom purposely chose afternoon for me because she knew things wouldn't go well for the teacher otherwise. 

This is all to say that I do not like mornings. And by extension, I don't like early mornings. If I don't set an alarm, I will likely sleep until 10:00 or later. So needless to say, waking up at o'dark thirty is not something I prefer to do. Getting up at some crazy hour to RUN is sure as heck not something that sounds like fun.

During Dopey training, I've had to make a few concessions. With my crazy work schedule and the crazy amount of miles I need to run, it was obvious pretty early on that I'd need to do at least 1 or 2 early morning runs a week to fit it all in. I started this in the summer and found it wasn't so bad because it was already light out and that made it so much easier to fool my body into thinking it was later than it really was. But gradually it started getting later and later until the sun came up and my runs got longer and longer, which meant I was getting up earlier and earlier, meaning I was getting up while it was dark. 

But you know what? It wasn't all that bad. I discovered I could do 1 morning a week of this. Then on nights that I didn't work 2 jobs, I could keep doing my evenings runs and sleep in. Except, I didn't keep doing my evening runs. It was too easy for other, more fun, plans to come up throughout the day. Or maybe I was just tired. Or maybe it was too hot. Or maybe probably I was just being lazy. In any event, evening runs were being skipped too often. And the evening runs that weren't being skipped were not very good. 

Soon, I found myself getting up to run early in the morning even on days I didn't have to work my 2nd job. And....gasp...I found out I like it better. The runs went better. My day started off on a good note and I was more efficient in getting stuff done. 

Could it be? Was I becoming a morning person? In a phrase....oh hell no. BUT I was becoming someone who liked to get her run in and out of the way first thing in the morning before life got in the way, her back started to hurt and excuses were easily made. 

So, at least for now, I am doing the morning run thing. We'll see if I can keep this up for the next 3 1/2 months. Pretty soon early mornings are going to start getting cold. I don't even want to think about that just yet. 

But at the moment, I feel like I need to come to terms with who I've become. 

"Hi. My name is Raegan and I'm an early morning runner."