The Voice.
I'm sleeping. It's 3 AM, 3:14, to be exact. I feel a nudge in my head. It's me.
"Get Up"; I tell myself. "It's perfect running out there, you need to get up so you can do a sunrise run.".
"No", I toss myself to lay on my other side, "I'm going to sleep in".
A voice in my head shouts; "ARE YOU CRAZY? It'll be all sunny. You know how you hate the bright sunshine. ...and I know how much you love a sunrise run."
So I get up. Make coffee, grab a Clif® Bar. Head over to the computer to check e-mail, facebook, and DailyMile. My weather app says 33° and 8 mph winds, it's going to be a chilly run. I'll think I'll wait a while, the winds usually calm down near sunrise.
5:30 AM and two cups of coffee later I'm ready, the winds are down to 3 mph, but the temperature is 29, I'm out the door.
Within a half mile I know how this run will go. I feel great, my legs are trying to go faster than they should, I've got to calm them down. At the 5 mile mark I'm still feeling very good, so I turn my 10K plan into a 10 Miler and head across a busy highway that separates the East Montgomery neighborhoods to do a popular 5K route. Morning is breaking and it is no longer dark, but the sun hasn't risen yet. The eastern horizon is bright orange and looks like many sunrise/sunset paintings I've seen.
The wind is starting to pick up again, and since I didn't put a second layer on my hands, the way I usually do when it's this cold, my left hand is starting to hurt from the cold. I head back home to soak my hand in warm water. I still have one and a quarter mile to go to hit 10. After the feeling comes back to my hand, I grab some dry gloves, sunglasses and a hat and head back out for a "cool down", even though I was already cold.
This run felt great. Well, the hand was a little uncomfortable, but everything else was good. It was one of the easiest training workouts of the year.
