Getting up Early

I have always considered myself a night owl. Often I do not go to bed until at least 11 if not midnight even though I need to wake up at 6:30 to get ready for work. It has been fine over the years and I am happy that I can function on a small amount of sleep. However, over the past four weeks in particular my short and medium runs have been getting to a distance where I need to wake up anywhere from 5:15 to 5:45 to get it in. Right now my "medium" runs are 8 miles! That is going to take me about an hour and a half. So to be back to my house by 7 I am running by 5:30am and waking up 15 minutes or so before that. Yikes! I have been going to sleep earlier which has helped, but honestly it is something that is sometimes hard to get used to. The further I get into the training the larger the urge to hit the snooze button gets.

Another thing that I have noticed is starting around the 5 to 6 mile mark I start to get some stomach discomfort and need to go to the bathroom. It was bad enough on Wednesday that I ended up doing 6 miles instead of 8. Today I did make it through the whole 8, but the last two and a half miles were tough. So far the only thing that I can do to make the sensation pass is to just simply slow down. I am going to get very picky in terms of nutrition next week and see if it makes a difference.