Alarming morning affects my run

Rude awakening

Today's run (street): 3.2 miles

This morning's fun started early. It was 2:39 AM to be exact. That was when we were woken up by an incessant beeping. It turned out that our alarm system was signaling that the backup battery was low. Apparently our street had lost power some time earlier. After a bleary-eyed call to LIPA's outrage line (that was a typo but I'm leaving it in), we went back to sleep, only to be awoken around 5:00 AM when the power came back and reactivated the alarm.

We had overnight guests down the hall and thankfully they slept through the craziness. Since I was up early, I decided to go out for my run sooner than I normally would. The skies were overcast, but there didn't appear to be any rainclouds in sight. I went out fairly fast (at least it felt that way) and hoped I could carry that urgency through my full distance.

My effort seemed moderately high and I tried to maintain a steady cadence. A check of my heart rate around mile 2 showed that I was 8 BPM below where I wanted to be. I hoped that was due to improved conditioning, but it was probably a case of perceived effort not matching actual effort. In the end I completed the run both pleased and disappointed. Pleased, because my time was better than average, but disappointed because I was still 15 seconds per mile slower than my last weekday run.

I'm aiming to improve on that tomorrow. Perhaps the disrupted sleep affected my performance. Yes, let's go with that.