You'd think with my super-reliable alarm clock there would be no question of my getting up at 4:00 a.m. to run, right? I have a pretty determined, furry, 23 lb alarm clock who does not like schedule changes. If I get up once at 4:00 a.m., he's pretty sure I should get up all the time at 4:00 a.m. Even if I turn off my regular, electrically-powered alarm clock, the fuzzy black one will be at the side of the bed within just a few minutes, with his beady little eyes glaring reproachfully. He wants OUT. Even though he pottied only seven hours ago (and this is the dog who got stuck in the house once for a day and a half WITHOUT having an accident), it is time for his morning constitutional, and he will not be denied.
Oh, I try to deny him, certainly. I tell him to shush. He continues to rustle around. I tell him to shush again. He scratches at the bedroom door (and no, we can't let him have the run of the house all night because his toenails on the hardwood floor drive us crazy, and if you're thinking we should crate him, well, you don't know much about the vocalizations of Shiba Inus). I shush him again, and he jumps on the bed and starts rolling around, kicking and biting at the blankets. Out of sheer kindness to my husband, I finally get up and take the dog out before he wakes up too.
Usually by the time I've shushed the dog as many times as I can, I've killed between 30-45 minutes. At that point, it's close enough to the "other" time I have to get up that I go ahead and get up for good.
The dog is both persistent and consistent. This battle rages every single morning, weekdays, weekends, and holidays. With such an irresistible force, you'd think I'd be lean and mean from all my morning workouts. Nope. Despite my demoniacal conscience, my Jiminy Cricket from hell, I haven't been running nearly as much in the mornings as I should. The most mornings I've done in a week has been three. I think I only ran once last week. Not good. If I can't get into a routine with my running in the morning by the end of May, I may have to give up and go back to mornings at the gym. Meh.
2 comments:
The snooze button will kill you. Not that it sounds like Maer has a decent one. Ginger, on the other hand, gives me an hour snooze when I need that button. She wakes me at an ungodly hour. I get up out of bed and head for the bathroom. She thinks that I'm up and will get ready to take her out, and goes to LAY BACK DOWN IN HER BED until I come to wake her! Jokes on her, tho', when I crawl back into my bed and proceed to sleep for another hour!
As to running vs. the gym: I always ran in the morning vs. going to the gym when I lived in OC. It is much less effort to go running than it is to get organized to go to the gym. I could run in glasses, without putting the contacts in; not so at the gym. Who cared about mismatched clothes...it was dark out (and at 4 in the freaking a.m. it is most assuredly dark). What I'm trying to say is: if you can't get motivated to run, how do you remotely expect to get motivated to go to the gym? Work on the running...it seems to me to be the best method for kickstarting the metabolism in the morning. GL leetle seester.
Yer Bro
aka Sheik Yerbouti
I'm not a snooze-button person anyway; I think it might go all the way back to college (I got hypnotized; ask Joni for the details), but I really can't sleep after the alarm goes off the first time. Now, if I wake up BEFORE the alarm goes off and set it to go off later, I can go back to sleep just fine. Weird. But no, Maer does not have a snooze button, no matter how hard I bop him on the head.
My problem with the running in the mornings is not the siren call of the gym in any way; it's definitely easier to work out at home than go all the way to the gym. My problem is this: I HATE RUNNING. I despise it with every inch of my corpulent self. I just don't have any other options. Walking just isn't enough of a high-impact cardio workout to burn the pounds away. I'm afraid to ride my bike in the morning--the cars that are around that early are not likely to try to miss me and I'm not particularly nimble on my bike. I would love to skate, but again, getting run over is not in my best interests, the pavement is awfully rough, and I have no way of lighting up the inline skating rink in Hernando to make a 4:30 skate time realistic. Betsy suggested those On Demand exercise routines, and I know you've done them too, but I can't figure out how to watch them on our media center in the living room(and of course the TV in the bedroom is off-limits because certain people are still asleep), and besides, our floor bounces badly and I'm sure I'd bounce the house apart doing aerobics in the living room.
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