strategy

As you can see from my handy dandy little counter there on the sidebar, I have less than 100 days until I run my first ever marathon. I am five weeks into my official training program and I have made a discovery.

First of all I am a confirmed nocturnal person. By nature I like to be up late, and as I am also a seven-hour a night minimum sleeper that means I also lean towards sleeping in. Really if I had my bones I would sleep nine hours a night, but one can't be greedy.

So the big challenge for some time has been figuring out when to get my running in. Yes I know to those of you with children that this seems like it would be cake for a single childless person to do, but really it has been tricky. See I have been working late nights quite a bit, often without advance planning. In any normal workday we have summer hours which predicates me staying until 6:00 pm, and then if you add on an hour or two of work then we are looking at me hitting the gym at 8:00 or 8:30 and not getting home until 10:00.... which even to a night owl like me is hard to swallow.

Thus as ever my struggle to get up and do my runs in the morning. Try and try as I may I just couldn't do it. I read the advice about exposing myself to sunlight, getting to sleep early enough, what to eat, what not to eat, taking drugs, everything. Yet to no avail.

So on a whim one night I took a vitamin B complex pill one night as I prepared for bed. The next morning my alarm went off, I hit the snooze and realized that while I would not mind going back to sleep but...

I was awake.

Every time I see a doctor I am always reminded that due to the particular section of my intestine having been removed I need to be diligent about taking my B vitamins. So I have done so. Every morning. And when I run out or forget boy do I notice a difference.

This is amazing, waking up and not feeling like my entire body has been velcroed to the bed. Not feeling like my limbs are weighted down. Not struggling with every ounce of my being to remain conscious.

For the past five weeks I have been getting up before work to hit the gym, and waking up at the crack of dawn to train my long runs outside before the heat climbs too high. It is amazing, night and day the difference.

My final discovery just happened this past week. Since rising early I have been feeling tired at work. Shocker. So I started to take another B complex in the morning. Voila, problem solved.

Now, I don't believe that this is central to me, so if for any reason you have been really struggling to get up in the morning give my nighttime vitamin dose a whirl. Can't hurt!

Marathon powered by B-12. I could be a walking commercial people!!