“If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” – Bruce Lee

“Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep”

It’s 6:00am, Saturday, I don’t even have to look. I stop the alarm clock and lay in bed. The debate rages in my mind: I really should get up….but it’s so comfortable here.

Typically the battle is won or lost the night before. What time I go to bed, what I eat or drink in the 2 hours leading up to that time, and the action of setting the alarm clock. But not this time. Nope, this time I did everything right the night before. I made sure I got 8 hours of sleep, I hydrated well (but not too well) before I hit the sack, and I promised myself I would get up when the alarm clock rang. This time, the true battle came in the morning.

I don’t know why it’s harder to wake up to an alarm clock on a Saturday. Being in retail, I work some Saturdays (I hesitate to say “lots” of Saturdays, because some other people in our store may beg to differ), and I do my best to treat them just like a weekday. But, alas, it is not a weekday. During the week, I usually pop right out of bed as soon as my alarm goes off – I’m ready to get the day started. But on the weekend….well, things are different. Imagine a 3 year old zombie – I’m slow, lethargic, and whiny. I guess you could say I’m generally unmotivated. It’s almost as if I’ve trained myself somewhere along the way (college) that the weekends were all about doing nothing. I know from experience that even if I don’t set the alarm, I don’t sleep in past 7:00 anymore, but there’s something inside me that says maybe, just maybe, I would have slept until 11:00 if it weren’t for that darned alarm clock.

The debate continues: You never regret getting up, but you almost always regret staying in bed.

As a coach, it is my job to get the most out of each athlete every day. As a coach, I’m afforded some kind of intrinsic authority that even teenage girls (usually) respect. They will do the workout I’ve prepared because they trust that I have a specific reason for the day’s exercise, no matter what it is. I also have the benefit of practice being in the afternoon, after school, and before they’ve gone home; they are there already, so they may as well come to practice, and since they are at practice, they may as well do the workout. As a coach of others, I have all this working for me. It’s too easy to say “no” to your coach when your coach is yourself.

It’s 6:07am, Saturday, this time I look that alarm clock straight in the face, roll out of bed, and prepare myself for an amazing run.