chasing ZZzzs

Doesn't work!

Instead, one must become tired enough to invite them, but it's surprising just how much fatigue and sleep deprivation this requires at times.

I have been sleeping about 5-6hrs a night for the past two weeks.    This is my third time working an evening shift and I've decided to do the biphasic sleep thing again; it worked well last time and suits the family schedule best.

Unfortunately, the midday nap has been an issue.  The chief antagonist has been a certain Episcopal church's noon bell behind our backyard.  It is so close that I can hear the reverb of the bell through closed windows and over a ceiling fan AND white noise generator; we are on top of a little hill and the church slightly below it, and so the bells and our house are pretty much level.  Worse still, the ringing of this bell is lengthy and random: ~ 12 repetitions, give or take one or a few, with an unsteady beat.   This irregularity has spawned a compulsion to count and observe.

This would be neither here nor there except that noon falls in the middle of my optimal nap time.  I've been trying to shift the nap without much success.  The last two days, I couldn't manage to nap at all, despite being pretty tired.

On Monday, we jogged 2.5 miles and then I did one of MarC's workouts, well, half of one of her workouts.  The volume is sometimes too much for me.

Yesterday, the dog and I were so wiped, we didn't run nor even walk.  I pretty much stayed horizontal until I left for work.  And yet, I couldn't nap.

Today, we got up earlier and I had the option of going back to sleep, but, no, I did not fancy spending a couple of hours in unsatisfactory drowsing and then maybe one or two more in ineffective napping.  Instead, we ran earlier than we usually do, and it felt fresh and wonderful.

So we got up and jogged 2.5 miles.   I felt half asleep for much of it, but since we live on top of a hill, gravity helped me get rolling.  (quick calculation for funnies: PE = mgh = 58kg*9.8m/s^2*10m = 5.7 kJ) And then I did one of Z's workouts, lots of squats, and now I'm feeling pleasantly tired.  And hopeful!

I haven't been running much more than 2.5-3 miles at a time these days but maybe that's all I need.  And, I suppose, this could count as a taper: this Sunday, my husband and I are going to run (suffer?) the rather hilly local 1/2 marathon.