Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Sleep

I got out of work a little bit late last night. I wanted to run 6 miles and I also needed to make it to a little "farmstand" grocery store that closes at 6:00. So, I had three choices: cut my run short, shop first and then run in the dark, or run faster than normal.

I chose the latter option and my run went pretty well. The roads were icy at places because it had briefly gone about freezing in the afternoon, but things were cooling off again when I ran. So, I had to take it easy on the icy patches, but I got in 6 miles at a sub-9 pace.

After running and getting some groceries, I headed home to cook dinner. I was surprised to see that I now had 3 children rather than 2, but it turned out that the third child belonged to one of the neighbors. The last thing I needed was another male teenager in my house right now. Other than eating a lot, and sending text messages every 30 seconds or so, the two boys mostly stayed to themselves and played video games. I hope they weren't texting each other, but you never know.

I was tired after my workout, and I headed to bed to do some reading about 8:00. I'm just starting Mark Bittman's "Food Matters". I know I'm going to disagree with some of the dietary recommendations in this book, but I understand the environmental issues that it raises. The book also contains 75 recipes that are low in animal protein. I've been looking forward to reading it since its recent release.

But, after just a few pages of the book, I found myself dozing off. It wasn't the book; it was me. About 8:30, I gave up and turned out the lights. The next thing I knew, it was 6:30. I'd slept right through my alarm and my morning workout, which was planned to be a short, easy run in very cold weather.

Tonight I'll lift and then tomorrow I'll take a rest day, except for snowblowing. On Friday morning, I'll hit the treadmill for my first 20 miler since early November.

Snow tonight, snow tomorrow, lighter snow through the weekend, and then we might have a big storm on Sunday night. I may need to take a day off work on Monday to go free skiing if that later storm materializes.

2 comments:

David Ray said...

Sleep is good. Nice that the teenagers didn't keep you up. I've been known to wear earplugs to bed.

Damon said...

When I'm tired, nothing keeps me up. It makes my wife kind of crazy, because our one dog often decides she needs to go out during the night. This dog is very strong-willed and can't be allowed outside off-lead. So, a few nights per week, my wife has to get up in the middle of the night to take the dog out. I never hear a thing, so she figures she'll take the dog out because she's already awake. Good for me, but I think my wife suspects that I'm faking sleep.