I love my summer evenings. I remember when the girls were really little and my husband would finally get home from work and the girls were fed and put to bed by 7pm. Then it was my time. This was when I would leave the house for some quiet time. At that time I was not at the gym at all, I would head out for a walk usually with the dog. It would not have been the first walk of the day as I made sure that I took the girls for a walk in the morning and/or afternoon as well. One strapped to me in her carrier, the other in the stroller, me pushing the stroller up the steepest hill I could find in the neighborhood.
Once I started my evening walk though, I started to really reflect on the day and destress. At first I started running the downhill parts of my walk and then walking the flat and hilly parts. Soon, I was running the downhill and the flat, and finally after about a month I was running the whole route. Then I started branching out. And I would do this all in the evenings, and depending how hot it was outside and whether or not there was an active forest fire in the area, I would be out at 8pm or later.
I eventually found a running partner, though only for about 3 months we ran together, but she needed to run super early in the morning. And it was at that point that I became a morning person. I was back at work after my last maternity leave and it was nice to get up before everyone else and have my run done for the day, come home and still have time to sip my morning coffee instead of chugging it once it cooled down.
I began at the gym, almost 3 years ago now, heading to the earliest class possible, 6am. Being home by 7:15am and still having 15 minutes to myself before the rest of the house woke up was awesome and that was my favourite time to be at the gym. It’s a great group of people at that time of day.
But since competition last May…wow, that seems ages ago…so much has happened in life – from injuries to autsim to work, you know, just plain ‘life’ – that I have sleep issues. I’ll admit it, I have some serious sleep issues. And from what I’ve heard, as I age as a woman, it will just get better! Fabulous!!
‘Insomnia – or sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder in which there is an inability to fall asleep or to stay asleep as long as desired’ as per Wikipedia…and if you do go and read the definition a bit further, it labels it as short term and long term, long term being ‘above 3-4 weeks’…well Wikipedia, this has been going on for months!
Here is the situation: I fall asleep right away no problem but awake 2-3hrs later and am WIDE AWAKE, to the point that I actually get my netbook or cell out, pull the covers over my head and read for an hour or so until I am tired enough to fall back asleep. The other scenario is that I just toss and turn all night, dozing, and never really reaching that deep sleep that we all need to re-energize ourselves for the next day.
This leads to me not getting up at 5:30am to go to the gym. Believe me when I tell you – my husband can vouch for me, I am sure it drives him nuts! – I still set my alarm every morning to try and make it to my 6am class! Sometimes I make it, but more often I don’t. But hey, that’s fine, that’s what the 5:30PM class is for!! And really, once I get to the point of going to the PM class, I won’t fall asleep with enough hours to get up and not be a zombie at the 6am class…you know that pre-workout really keeps me bouncing off the walls until after 10pm most nights.
Truly, it is all about routine and I am so out of routine it isn’t funny. But I don’t think that it is a bad thing. Sometimes we need some casualness in our lives. And I am finding that I like working out in the evenings again.
So, if any of you out there are awake in the middle of the night, drop me a line, you never know, I might be surfing the net or reading a book online!
Sweet dreams!
loreleidournovo 