Statistic Of The Week: On Saturday I spent more hours running than I did sleeping.

Sometime between the day before my child was born, and the day after she was born, I somehow became a bad sleeper. Reasons why are a bit hazy. Anyway, I'm not very good at it any more. I usually can fall asleep the first time, but if my daughter wakes me I inadvertently wake up, then it often takes me hours to fall back asleep. Generally I psyche myself out of being able to fall asleep again. I'll look at the clock and say "Ok, I can get four hours of sleep if I fall asleep NOW........ Ok, three and a half if I do it NOW". That can go on for a while. It's basically a big stupidfest in my brain. I'm anal-retentive about time and schedules and this is one of the places where it really kicks me in the ass.

I doomed myself on Friday night. You see, I'm going to run a marathon five weeks from now, and I had a big 20-mile training run scheduled for Saturday morning. While getting ready for bed on Friday night, I told myself that I didn't have to get a full nights sleep to have a successful run. "Really, I only need about four hours. So, as long as I'm asleep by 3:00am, I'll be fine!".

That was it. Once I had uttered that "3:00am" deadline, there was no way I was going to be able to fall asleep before 3:00. In fact I watched 3:00am go by, verrrrrry sloooooowly. I watched all the hours between 11:00pm and 5:00am go by. They weren't as quiet as you might think. I enjoyed the following during my nocturnal idiocy:

11:00 - 12:00 : Worried about preparation for the run. Marveled at how awake I was.
12:00 : Kid woke up and needed parental reassurance. Wife provided desired reassurance.
1:00 : Experienced the smoke detector randomly going off. My wife, apparently, burst out of bed and ran straight into the wall. I missed this bit of hilarity during my own bit of confused panic
1:01 - 2:00 : Noted that 3:00am was approaching.
2:00 : Kid woke up from bad dream. Needed snuggling. I provided requested snuggling.
2:00 - 3:01 : Watched 3:00 go by. Constructed new sleeping plan which merely required going to sleep NOW.
3:02 - 4:00 : Rotated through all my favorite sleeping positions including the Flemish Hypotenuse
4:00 : Kid woke up and said she couldn't sleep. I gritted teeth and attempted to provide comforting presence. After several minutes of this, kid urged me to go back to bed.
4:10 - 5:00 : Panicked

I fell asleep around 5:00 and the alarm went off at 7:00am. Two sweet sweet hours of sleep. Mmmmmm.

Somehow, I did manage to complete my 20 mile run in about 2.5 hours. Granted, I ran a bit slower than I planned, but all things considered, it was a successful run. Five weeks to go. Tick tick tick.