Good morning world!

I am not a morning person.  Never have been.  If it were up to me, all races would be in the evening.  We actually have a few of those here now and believe me, racing in the evening is a lot more fun than racing in the morning!  The last time I went for a pre-10 a.m. morning run was at my last race -- in Eilat in October.  The only reason I did it then was because the race organizers wouldn't agree to have the race in the evening.  I would have compromised on swim/bike in the morning, run in the evening, but nooo....  The last time I went out for a pre-10 a.m.training run was in December 2010 (I don't even remember this, but it's in my training log).  The last time I ran before 7 a.m. was in October 2010 after I'd finally managed to ride my bike all the way up to Ein Netafim.  I got there at 6:45 a.m. and ran 2 km.  Then there was the time in September 2010 that I got up to ride and discovered that my derailleur was broken.  I was already out of bed and ready to move, so I went for a run, instead.  In short, I do not like running in the morning.

Fast forward to July 2012.  Last night's brick was canceled, so I thought I'd go out for a run, instead.  I found myself working until late, though -- before I knew it, it was much too late to go out running.  I'm on a training streak and I'm trying hard to stay consistent, plus, I'd only run once this week, so I decided to haul myself out of bed at 6 a.m. and get out there.  And I did.  I was out the door at 6:34.  Incredible.  You can only imagine what my legs thought of being asked to run so early in the morning.  Let's just say that they were mainly screaming four-letter words.  After about a kilometer, though, they got with the program.  It was hot and gross outside, but it was morning and I went running.  It wasn't fast and it wasn't pretty, but I did it.

Can I go back to sleep now?

Running and allergies

I've been doing some reading on running and allergies and I've reached the conclusion that I'm just weird. Actually, I reached that conclusion some time ago, but I digress...

So it seems that most people with allergies find it hard to run outdoors during allergy season. For me, allergy season is more or less twelve months long, but my daily antihistamine seems to take care of my "seasonal" allergies. It's the chlorine allergy that makes me miserable. The good news is that running seems to take care of that. All that sweating must flush the histamines out of my body or something, because running invariably takes care of my itchy, watery eyes, or at least for a while. Now there's a good reason to run, especially if I want to keep swimming!