Early Morning Run

People wonder how I find time to work with all the time I spend running, skiing, hiking, and having fun. I do work an equivalent of a 40 hour work week, but not in the typical way. For 2 weeks I enjoy lots of time off with only a few work days, then I work a long hard stretch of 12 hour shifts with on-call nights and a working weekend. I think of this every third week as pay back for all the fun I have had the previous two weeks. I set this schedule up myself so there is no one else to blame when I am in the middle of Hell Week, where I happen to be right now. At 8:00 on Monday, when everyone else is going back to work I will be starting my two weeks of bliss

I set out for an early morning tempo run on very little sleep and with a lot of stress today. Needless to say, it wasn't a great run. But I did get it done. The weather was nice for running and the roads were wet, but clear. I ran a 20 minute warm up followed by 30 minutes at tempo and a 20 minute cool down. I didn't pay attention to pace because I knew it would be off today. I went by my heart monitor and kept the rate up where it would normally be at Tempo pace. It feels good to have gotten it done early. I know my day will go better having had a good hard workout before diving in to another difficult day.

Late in the afternoon when I am dealing with my stressed out coworkers, I often wish they had gone for a walk or a run or a gym workout before their shift started. I know they sure are glad when I get my workout in before work! By the way, the pathetic crying incident has been tactfully "forgotten" by my co-workers.