6ams

I'm getting used to 6ams. They don't hit me any less hard than before, but my mind has at least resigned to them. As a night owl, it's not a time I would willingly set an alarm for. And maybe an early start affects me more than most. However, no one ever had a child and didn't have to recalibrate their sleep schedule. Isa is now usually up at a merciful 8am, perfect timing as far as a baby's fickle circadian rhythms go. For the past few Saturdays, however, he's been up at around 6.

He doesn't cry or complain. He starts his wonderful chattering, which is just loud enough to insist no one is going back to sleep now. We're up. I get up, change him, dress him, and we begin playtime. Stories, songs, rough and tumble and more. Sometimes we sit at the window and watch the world slowly come alive. We see stamp brasseries lights come on and staff start making up their tables. You watch buses going north and south near empty at first. There is no hour of the day where a London bus is truly empty, but slowly filling as the sun commits to the day.

By 8am, it's time for feeding and a nap, which leaves me just enough time to dress in sports gear, have a snack (a banana usually hits my system just in time to really sustain me, but avoid a stitch) and jog over to Finsbury Park. My Saturday morning privilege is running parkrun, a 5km sprint to kick off the weekend. Sometimes the timing doesn't work out like last week where he wasn't ready to nap and feed until near 9am, and I couldn't make it to the park in time. The problem is that by the time I reach the start line, I'm pretty tired. The wall of the 500-odd-strong crowd helps. In fact, I have to try not to get swept up in their enthusiasm. Park runners tend to launch hard and kick off with an overzealous first kilometer, which I've suffered from before. This is the wrong approach at Finsbury Park in particular, where you've got to save energy for the deceptive hill which opposes you on that last split.

Today, the sky was bright and overcast, and the air was flecked with moisture, a gentle mist. At first, this wet weather felt inclement, oppressive even. But as my body began to warm, muscles settling into rhythmic output, it felt cooling and awakening. I crossed the finish line in a time close to my PB, having managed the hills better than ever and meaningfully changed for me.

I've observed that these hills do not do to me: I'll be happily running, my heart rate stable, gently creeping up to about 160 beats a minute... and then I'll reach the first hill. My heart will kick into overdrive and never come down from 180 beats per minute. I should really do hill sprints, but my running training is very oriented toward routes I enjoy running, or have easy access to. I often have to stop at some point on the hill, but today, I didn't at all. I kept up a good pace and continued it at the top, though my heart rate elevated as usual (maybe just out of habit). I really went for it in that last kilometer and crossed the finish line tired, but satisfied.