The most miraculous thing happened today

Guess who woke up early this morning to go for a run?  This girl!  It's a miracle, one that nearly didn't happen.  I was inspired last night reading some posts from my fellow Ragnar teammates who had gone out early yesterday to do our scheduled hill repeats and I made mention of that fact that I could use some "get your butt in gear" texts this morning to make sure I got out to do my hill repeats.  As soon as my alarms started going off, the odds of me getting up looked slim.  I kept hitting snooze and I was 99% sure that I was going to stay in bed.  Then, my phone started lighting up with Facebook messages and texts from my awesome Ragnar teammates and I got out of bed, put my running clothes on, and headed out the door.  I was about 30 minutes later than I planned to be, but I made it to the trail just before 6:30.

I know I've said it before, but I'm very fortunate to be a part of this amazing Napa Ragnar team.  These women are some of the most supportive, encouraging, caring, inspiring women I've met and I love them already, even though I haven't met most of them in person yet!  We've spent so much time getting to know each other on Facebook over the past few weeks and I can't wait to meet them in person in September!

Proof that I was up that early; trust me, it's a rare occurrence! 

I admit that part of my hesitation about running early in the morning (other than the fact that I love sleep) was a general fear of being alone on the trail with little daylight since it's wooded in parts, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the trail was bustling at 6:30 a.m.!  Everyone was so friendly, too!  Who knew so many people were morning people?  It makes sense, though, that so many people were out to beat the heat.  The weather was really lovely this morning.  I definitely broke a sweat, but the weather could have certainly been worse.

Not too shabby for mid-July!

I had 6 hill repeats on the schedule for today, so I went to my go-to hill from last week and mentally prepared myself for the challenge ahead.  I felt really good on the first two uphills, but it started to go downhill from there (pun somewhat intended).  My legs started to rebel a bit, so the last 4 hill inclines included a tad bit of walking near the top.  I was able to run for the majority of the uphill stretches, though. I was able to complete all 6 hill repeats and get my workout in before I truly started my day!

Lovely sunrise, which I don't see often

Overall, it wasn't too bad to get up early and go run.  The biggest challenge, by far, was actually getting out of bed!  It was really nice to get my workout out of the way and I felt pretty alert most of the day (although I did have a mid-afternoon crash, but I'm guessing that is because I went to bed later than I should have last night).

I've seen the quote below floating around for a while and I had my doubts, but there is definitely some truth to it.  For much of the first half of my run, I felt like I was on auto drive since I was only half awake.  It wasn't until close to the end that my brain finally woke up and realized what was going on!

"Exercise in the morning before your brain figures out what you're doing."