Morning workouts - bittersweet

I am not a morning person..however I'm not sure I'm really a night person either.  I guess that makes me more of a midday person.  Its not that I'm grumpy in the morning, actually once I get up and get on my way I'd say I'm quite pleasant :)  I just really enjoy not having to get out of bed super early and more than that I love starting my morning with coffee and breakfast.  Breakfast is my most favorite meal of the day... I'm not sure why exactly but I just really like it.  As boring as it sounds I love oatmeal in the morning as long as its plain oatmeal that I can doctor up in my own way.  Its a morning ritual I relish and really want to take my time with.  In my mind working out in the morning often interferes with this morning ritual of coffee and oatmeal.  If I want to eat it ahead of time I need to get up early enough to make it and eat it and let it "settle" before I start running which could take a while since oatmeal is a pretty filling meal I'd prefer not to take off on a jog right after I set the bowl down.  Now, eating it after my run is an option but this also means I need to get up early enough to run and then get home in time to have breakfast while its still breakfast time.  Also, if I run before I eat my breakfast I still need a snack before I run.  I'm not a big fan of running on an empty stomach and need to at least put something in there.  Usually this is some kind of bar and I try to keep it around 200 calories or else its like a whole meal in itself and then I'm having 2 breakfasts and I wouldn't say my workouts are so tough that they warrant 2 breakfasts.

This morning was a morning run day.  I always have such grand ideas at night as I'm going to bed like; "Tomorrow morning I'll get up and go to the 5:45 AM spin class" or "I'll get up when Dave gets home at 6:30 and head out for a run".  These things rarely happen and just leave me feeling like a failure.  But this morning I actually followed through - although reluctantly and perhaps about 30 minutes later than I had originally planned; I still go out the door.  I knew I wanted to run and since yesterday was a total rest day I figured I'd try to put in some good miles.  So I wanted to do 8 miles.  I had a meeting on my calendar for 10am which I needed to be at home and on the phone for.  So this means I needed to leave myself about 1.5 hours to do the run and leave enough time to actually cool off for a second before I sat at my desk.  When I went to bed I was thinking that I'd go running at 7:30 so I could be back in time for pre-meeting breakfast and prep.  My alarm went off somewhere around 7:15 I think and I kept snoozing it and was semi-awake and again (like I always do for morning workouts) trying to talk myself out of it.  Maybe I'll go this afternoon.. or maybe I'll just go to the gym later.  Why is it SO hard to get out of bed to do a morning run when I know afterwards I'll feel great and so glad I got it over with.  I love getting the workout done in the morning because later in the day it almost feels like cheating...like I never worked out.  Somehow I convinced myself to go.  I finally got moving closer to 8 and felt slow and heavy for the first mile and then settled in a bit.  I had to do some more mind games when it was getting close to the 1/2 way point because I wanted to turn around early but I stuck it out and glad I did.  For some reason as soon as I turn around on an out and back I feel much better :)  By mile 7 I was surprised how good I felt.  So I finished it out with an average pace of 9min/mile which felt good.  So glad I got it done but I KNOW I'll have to do the same convincing next time I plan to get out of bed early! 

Tomorrow I'm planning on walking the dogs before breakfast :)... we'll see!