It Happens Every Spring

I think I shocked my mom last week when she sent me an email at 9:30am her time (which was 6:30am my time) and I replied seconds later.  This coming from the daughter who while living at home was notorious for hiding under her covers each morning until the last possible moment.  Reminds me of another daughter I know…

Last month, for no apparent reason, I began having trouble sleeping.  Instead of waking up at my normal time – 7ish, I woke up at 4ish.  Not once, not twice, but for an entire week.  Four o’clock my time is 7 in Michigan.  Using my new iPhone I laid in bed and tweeted with my friends as their day began.  It was a blast.  However as you can imagine, the sleepless nights took their toll on my body as the week progressed.

There is a strange phenomenon that takes over my body every spring.  I literally hibernate under the covers all winter long but in the weeks following daylight savings, I find myself waking up at the crack of dawn.  I’m one of those people who rarely uses an alarm clock.  The chirping of birds is usually enough to rouse me from my sleep.  My springtime pattern when I lived in Michigan was to use the early morning hours to go for a run.  As I lay in bed that week (wide awake and wondering if I would ever sleep through the night again) it dawned on me that after living in San Diego for eight months, my body was reverting to Michigan time.  It was spring after all – even if my friends in Michigan were still bracing for snow storms.  I resolved that week to return to my springtime routine.

When I moved last August, I stopped running.  I had broken from my routine during the weeks leading up to the move and I felt out of shape by the time we arrived in San Diego.  Not to mention that Detroit is more or less flat and San Diego is not!  The hills by our new house intimidated me.  There was even one nearby street that Adam and I dubbed “the hill of death”.  Happily, even though I wasn’t running, I did start exercising again this past winter.  I discovered that San Diego has some amazing hiking trails and each Saturday morning I have been dragging myself up Cowles Mountain.

So anyway.  Back to running.  I decided to turn my sleepless mornings into opportunities to go running.  By then I had moved into a neighborhood better suited for running.  There were still a lot of hills – but none like the hill of death.  I cautiously laced up my running shoes last month and discovered to my delight that I still had it in me.  I’m positive that I can thank my hiking routine for preparing my body to ease back into running.  I still wake up early every morning but now I have something more to look forward to.  I’ve even been sleeping in – until at least 6am!