6:30am

I'm in week one of this early morning thing. Yesterday (Monday) my alarm went off at 6:30 and I woke up ready to go. Then I realized it was my day off so I had all day to run. I stayed in bed until almost 8:00. I love bed. I did run 9 miles on the hilly roads near my house later in the day.
Today I again woke to the 6:30 alarm but this time I got up! I sipped my coffee, did the dishes (Jen's going to love this early morning stuff), and went for a 3.5 mile run. Today was the first day this year that I've been able to get on my trails in the woods around our house! Finally! It was really good to be back out there. I ran until the snow became too deep to keep running. At that point I turned around and headed home. It was a shorter run that I really wanted but my legs were fatigued from yesterday and I'm headed to the Chippewa 50K this Saturday so I didn't want to push it too much. I'll get up and run again tomorrow and then use Thursday and Friday to rest up for Chippewa. I'll probably do some yoga on those rest days just to keep the blood flowing.
Ideally I'd like Saturday to be 50 degrees, sunny and dry but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Given that it's been pretty wet and will continue to be for a while I'm hoping it's below freezing in the morning at the race. I realized this morning that if it was any warmer I'd have been slipping and sliding in the soft, muddy trail. But because it was right around freezing the trail was firm on the surface. I think the sections of the Ice Age Trail that the race will travel are going to be even wetter than the trails I ran on today. If it's warm we'll be spending the day ankle deep in muck. If it's cool, the muck will only be there for the return trip. Given that I'll be running near the back, enjoying the scenery it has the potential to get pretty sticky. We'll have to be sure our shoes are laced tight or we'll lose 'em.
I'm not excited to have to leave my house at 4:00am to get to the race but I can't wait to run those trails! It's always fun to run a new section of the Ice Age Trail and from the photos I've seen this is going to be a fun, adventurous section.