35 days until 5K

To be clear, I recognize that 5Ks are not a big deal. My older son ran one without any prep and finished in 26 minutes, which is probably beyond my capabilities, even with over a month of preparation. But it's still more than I've tackled before, so we'll pretend it's a big(ish) deal.

That said, I've had periods in the past where I woke at 5:40am and went to the gym every weekday. It's been at least a year since I've gone with any consistency, and a couple months since I've been at all. My routine lately has been getting out of bed just in time to put a shirt on, get the kettle going for the French press, and slide into my morning stand up with nickel slots for eyes.

On the flip side, I'll be up until 1 or 2, in bed scrolling TikTok or Instagram with Roku TV playing in the background.

So last night, I set my alarm to 5:30 with very little conviction and prayed with similarly little conviction that God would give me the inclination to rise with it, if I felt like it. To my astonishment, when the alarm went off, I said "well this won't be any more appealing tomorrow" and I got up and dressed and walked to the gym, just a couple blocks away.

I didn't have high hopes. 10 minutes at 6mph has always been my absolute bear minimum baseline, which I should be able to do at any time (though I remember working up to it when I first started messing about with treadmills in 2021), so I set it to 6.5mph, and ran for 10m30s.

I could have pushed for more, but opted to not kill myself on the first day back. Hopped onto the chest press machine after, then came home. Had a pot of coffee, protein shake, vitamins, showered, shaved, dressed, Duolingo, Bible reading (Colossians), and now sitting down to work.

Like anything else, I hate getting up early, I love having gotten up early.

Weighed in at 174.6lbs this morning. Not terrible. Would love to be down to 160 by race day, but not focusing too much on weight loss. Tracking it anyway...