Waiting for the sun to rise

It’s 07:15 and still very much dark outside, and I’m waiting for the sun to rise so that I can greet the day with my favourite 5k loop run. I’m not sure how, but I’ve gone from serial-snoozer to a pre-6am riser and morning cardio girlie. How? I just realised that nothing changes if nothing changes. I wanted to kick off my 2024 with the intention of making it my healthiest year yet.

I completed two yoga trainings in 2023, often feeling quite a lot of imposter syndrome because I didn’t have the ‘yoga body’ I thought I needed to be taken seriously or potentially hired in the future. But I needn’t have worried, I want to help others to see a variety of yoga bodies, and to truly live my Swim Run Yoga Girl lifestyle, I knew that I needed to shake up my morning routine and make the most of the early hours.

So I set my Lumie alarm clock (game changer) and promised myself my favourite Nespresso blend (Vivida B12) soon after waking, and I walked my way to the gym. Surprised to see more people in there than at any time of day I’d previously been, and thought to myself that I had been missing out on this early morning crowd’s motivation all this time.

There is a quiet magic to the early morning, it extends out into the rest of the day when you get to work and know that you’ve already chosen to take care of yourself. This early morning window has always been there, between 6-7am I am not needed on calls, at work, by anyone at all. It’s totally uninterrupted time that I would usually spend hitting my snooze every 5 minutes.

I committed to RED January, with my goal being to do morning cardio everyday for the whole month, which I’ve chosen to be mostly running and spinning and, of course, swimming. I wanted to team up my morning shake-up with a movement goal to motivate me, and it’s honestly been the best decision for not just my body, but also my mental health. The feeling of doing a little every day offers me a chance to prove to myself that I can follow through on promises I make to myself, with self-love over self-sabotage.

So this is not just a ‘New Year, New Me’ manifesto, it’s a New Year, Better Me. I have goals to chase that align with how I want to FEEL, not necessarily look. I have a new routine that I’m proud of, that I look forward to as I wind down the night before. I spotted a window of time that is wasted and made it into my favourite hour of the day.

So, as I patiently wait for the sun to rise up this morning, I feel grateful for the ability to run, to move, to have the time to reflect here. I’ve listened to The Power Hour Podcast by @Adrienne_ldn and read her book of the same name, always thinking ‘one day I will harness that early morning magic’. I now understand exactly what that means for my routine, my mood and my entire outlook on the day ahead.

Come on, sun, I’ve got a run to do.