My Morning Mile

Oh hai!  Where've you been?  It seems like it's been ages since I saw you all.  Dunno if you remember this, but about a year ago I was wondering what my winter/spring would have been like if I hadn't been training for a marathon.  Turns out that it's like major depression.  The kind that makes it easy to give in to my cravings for sugar and other carbs.  The kind that makes it difficult to do anything beyond the absolute minimum required.  Plus the minimum required at work has gotten pretty maximum in the last 4-5 months.  Plus other changes (and make no mistake--even good changes are stressful).  It's been tough. 

It's getting easier, at last.  The "I don't know how this is going to work" has settled into "we're finding our way through this."  The changes required more time than expected, so workouts have fallen to the wayside.  I went a full month without lacing up running shoes or unrolling my yoga mat.  Yes, yes--exercise is the #1 antidepressant--but sleep deprivation doesn't make depression any more pleasant to deal with either.  Still.  I keep waking up half an hour before the alarm goes off, so I decided to use that time to do something besides lay quietly and try to rest my body while my mind runs circles around my to-do list.

Yep.  That early.  (found the pic here with 10 tips to shut up and run)

One of my new roommates is a dog--a lovely husky/lab mix who is a bit neurotic.  I've seen similar behavior in purebred working dogs who have no work to do.  Working dog breeds seem to be more settled if they have activities similar to the ones they were bred to do. I thought that perhaps I could help us both.  About a week ago, I got up as soon as I woke up, laced up my running shoes, snapped on her leash, and went out into the cool of the dawn for a teeny-tiny, one-mile run.  I've done the same thing each day since then.

My running buddy, mid-wag

She gets very excited when she sees the running shoes go on my feet. She's also getting better at running on a leash and beginning to get used to the sustained effort the run requires.  She's learning to sniff things briefly without actually stopping our run.  She's learned a couple of commands and is slowly accumulating more. I'm not a morning person, so mostly this early running makes me tired and hungry.  However, it feels good to know that I'm becoming a runner again.  Plus, it's over before my sleepy brain realizes what I'm doing  (just like the motivational signs say).  

Found the poster here with 7 reasons to exercise early

And it's nice to start the day by making some creature ridiculously happy.