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Who am I again?

This morning, I set my alarm for earlier than I would to get up for work. That's right. On the 'day of rest' I set my alarm to make me stop resting earlier.

And last night, I sipped caffeine free tea and popped myself into bed at 10pm. Same time as if I was getting up for a hard days work.

One of my biggest fears in life is that I would never stop loving smoking. That I would always like it and therefore always smoke because my mantra is to do what I love to do (within reason, people).

And just as my hate-on for smoking surprised me, so has my desire to get up early.

I don't get up early. And I say this in the Tom Hanks-League of their Own-"There's no crying in baseball" voice.

And yet, guess what? I do.

Not only do I get up early, but I throw on some fitness gear, fill up my running belt bottles and head out to conquer the road, 1km at a time.

This morning met me with glorious sunshine, so much so that I didn't need all the layers I had piled on earlier in the morning when it was just dawn. And my call to NOT bring my sunglasses? Ah ya - bad call.

Training has been a whole different beast this time around. Initially, I was nervous about whether I could do it. I decided to train on my own this time, choosing to let my tunes be my motivation. Last week, I realized I was getting bored with myself.

And so, with a Running Room nearby, I decided to join the rest of the real runners and get my long run in, first thing in the morning.

Which brings us to the early rise. Last 1/2 marathon training, I dreaded trying to get up early to run. And today? Well, it seemed the like the most natural thing to do first thing in the morning - run for 2 and half hours.

It was a tough slog, but a glorious one, filled with feet thumping and mountain staring, idle chatter and re-hydrating..

So the best part about this self imposed wake up call? It wasn't hard to roll out of bed and it didn't seem out of the ordinary - at all.

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