I signed up for a marathon, not a 6:00 am wake up call

I think that we have established that I am not athletic. For the record, I'm also not a morning person. I take the moniker "sleepy-head" to a whole new level. When I was a kid, my mom would have to force me out of bed on Christmas morning. My mentality: Santa's presents can wait - they will be there when I get up. This girl needs her beauty sleep.

Now that I am adult, the challenge I call "rise and shine" occurs six days a week: on weekdays when I am forced to roll out of bed at an insanely early time (like 7:00 am - the horror!) to make it to my job before my boss sends out a search team looking for me. On Sundays I have to tear myself away from the covers no later than 8:30 am to make it to church. Which leaves my blessed Saturdays - days that I can sleep in until my heart and sleepy head is content.

Until now. When training for a distance run like a marathon or a half marathon, a runner generally has a training schedule that has 3 runs of various lengths during the week and a run on the weekends called the "long run." Presently, my long run is 10 miles. This run takes me a little under 2 hours to complete and takes place on a Saturday.

When I began my training in the late winter and spring, long runs on Saturday could be done when ever I felt like it and most certainly didn't take place at any time prior to noon. Obviously, I forgot that after the month of May came the months of June and July and with them came 80-90 degree temperatures.

After a horrendous run two weeks ago where I tried to run 10 miles in 82 degree heat (it was 7:00 pm for pete's sake, how is it 82 degrees at 7:00 pm? ), I came to the grievous decision that in order to beat the heat I would either have to run at midnight (whatever) or wake up as the sun came up and run then.

So this weekend my alarm went off at an ungodly hour on Saturday. I pulled myself out of bed and hit the trail as the sun came up. After 10 miles, a yummy post-run breakfast burrito, and a swing by the local running store for some new gear, it was still considered Saturday "morning." Wow, historically, I'd not even cracked an eye lid by that point. A girl can get a lot done when she gets up early on a Saturday ... Impressive.

Wait, don't get ahead of yourself here. It was not impressive enough to convert me to a morning person. Since I have set a goal to run this marathon, I'll do what it takes to achieve it, even if it means getting up earlier than I thought humanly possible on a Saturday. I'll do it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to like it. And that doesn't mean that once summer is safely behind us, I won't resume my weekly Saturday morning date with my comfy pillow and soft blanket (they call my name when I have to get up too early, you know).

So until then, if you'd like to bring me breakfast in bed on Saturday mornings, I'm not going to be available, sorry. There is however, only 64 more days to the first day of fall. Believe me, I'm counting.