Exercises in Humiliation

These are my friends Elizabeth and Lacie. As you may recall from THIS POST , it is their fault that I have spent the last two years waking up at an obscenely early hour to exercise.
When we started our masochistic workout routine nigh unto two years ago, I thought it would eventually get easier to drag my lazy carcass out of bed at 4:50 a.m.

Twenty three months later, I am still waiting for "eventually" to roll around.

At night I go to sleep in my comfy bed in my cute apartment, but every morning I wake up to my own personal Gitmo with Major General Elizabeth McPain as the self-appointed head torturer.

Of course there are perks to speed walking through my cute little cow town at 5 a.m. For example, the cool/cold weather creates an opportunity to cover up my early morning ugliness with layers and layers of clothing. Of course, the layers aren't really all that necessary considering that we are pretty much the only people awake at that time of the night/morning who aren't milking cows or dodging the police.

Not that it matters, because at 5 in the A.M., layers or no, the view looks an awful lot like this...

I have given both Elizabeth and Lacie a whole lot of grief about "forcing me" to get up that early over the past two years. This summer, however, I discovered that waking up at 4:50 a.m. is NOT the worst thing in the world.

No. That honor belongs to "waking up at 5:50 a.m."

Elizabeth, bless her hard-working-heart, decided to start teaching her private lessons a hour later this summer. That meant that we could sleep in a full 60 minutes before hitting the road each morning. I was pretty darn excited about that until my first post 5 a.m. wake up call rolled around and I realized that...

...THE SUN IS UP AT 5:50 a.m.!
At 5:50 a.m. I have no cloak of darkness to hide behind or cold-weather-excuse to justify my 6 a.m. hideousness under layers of sweatshirts and hoods.

Oh, and did I mention that there are other people awake at 6 a.m.?

Because there are.

There are a lot of them.

And they do not have swelled udders or flashing police lights to distract them from the not-so-beautiful results of my beauty sleep the night before.

Over the course of our first 6 a.m. walking session, Elizabeth and I crossed paths with our favorite shared student who was riding with her mother to soccer camp, one of the most distinguished musicians in our stake who was out for a walk of his own, my branch's missionary couple out for a stroll, a former kidlet on his way to swim team practice, and about eight other folks from the top of my "people who I NEVER want to see how I look when I roll out of bed" list. I may have burned a few calories walking those miles that day, but that is nothing compared to the water weight I lost crying countless tears of shame later that morning.

The big problem for me at that time in the morning is the toxic level of bedhead that I wake up with. I had no idea that, when I asked Tricia to chop off my longer locks, I was sentencing myself to countless mornings of near-fatal morning hair freakouts.

For those of you who have been lucky enough NOT to see me speed walking through your neighborhood at 6 a.m. this summer, here is a "visual approximation"

Wait.

That's not quite right.

When you combine my bedhead with a lack of eyeliner and toss in a healthy dose of oily skin and sandy eyes, my early morning exercise look is closer to this...

OK. So maybe I'm not quite THAT bad, but dude: I am NOT kidding about the bed head.

I've tried brushing it, combing it, and wetting it down. It's not long enough to subdue in ponytails, and ball caps just can't contain it.

I was actually very close to giving up my much-needed morning exercise time until I found out that the city pool offers an early morning lap swimming session. It was the perfect solution! Now, a few mornings each week, Elizabeth drives down my street, slowing down just enough for me run down my steps, across the lawn, and jump into her waiting car. The only people at the pool when we arrive are a few sleepy staffers, who are either setting out chairs on the far side of the pool or napping on the front counter wrapped up in towels. We leave our money on the counter and slip unseen into the locker room where the high-pressure pre-swim-showers force my bedhead into submission long enough for me to jump in the pool and successfully drown it for the rest of the day.

When our buddy Krystal started joining us in our early morning splash sessions, lap swimming became the perfect post-sunrise exercise program: visit with friends, burn calories, build muscles, and tame unruly hair follicles with out any of the bedhead induced humiliation that I continue to face on our walking mornings.

Aren't we lovely?

And for those of you who think that it is illogical for me to be so concerned with being seen with freaky hair while being not at all embarrassed about being seen in my swimming suit please consider the following: 1)I am a public school teacher at a junior high school 2)I live in Idaho and am not at registered republican 3)I willing provide my nephews with water guns and Nerf swords when I know that the minute the weapons are unwrapped I become the chief target and 4) I let my friends talk me into getting up at 4:50 a.m. for the last two years to walk around town in the dark. In short, the logic train hasn't made any stops in Mindyland for quite some time now. But I do have a lifetime pass on the crazy town express, and most days I get one heck of a ride...and I wouldn't want it any other way.