More Than I Can Chew

I let my friends talk me into registering for the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile race at the beginning of April. At the time I took on an "I can do anything" attitude. And really, I believe that is true but suddenly it seems it is true with limitations. My biggest limitation is time. A typical day for me goes something like this:

5:00am - Alarm, shower, makeup, hair, clothes
5:45am - Kitchen, prep dog, prep lunch, take vitamins, put clean dishes away, gather things for work, prep Evan's pre-breakfast and milk, brush teeth
6:10am - Get Evan up, dressed and downstairs in the high chair for his milk and small snack
6:20(ish) am - Jake comes down, we briefly talk about the day
6:28am - I am out the door sometimes taking outgoing mail or outgoing garbage cans with me
6:33-6:37am - Bus collects me from nearby bus stop and take me to Metro station
6:50-7:30am - On the train, catching up on personal email, social media or reading
7:30am - 3:50pm - work, work, work
4:00pm - 5:00pm - Reverse commute, if I am lucky I am home by 5:00pm
5:00pm-5:30pm - Let dog out, get mail/trash cans, change, spend 20 minutes doing whatever household tasks that deem themselves of most importance and start dinner
5:30pm - BOYS ARE HOME! (Best part of the day!)
5:30-6:30pm - I do my best to give them my full attention while still getting our dinner together
6:30pm - Dinner as a family
7:00pm - Time with the boys while Jake does the dishes
7:30pm-8:15pm - Baths and bedtime, Evan down by 7:40 and Declan down by 8:00
8:15pm - 10:00pm - This is my only free time and it varies between being extremely productive and not at all depending on what needs to be done and how tired I am. Then I am off to bed to start it all over again.

I have evaluated this schedule over and over and over again to try and fit in running time. Sometimes I am successful in fitting it in between 5:00pm and 5:30 when the boys get home. Very rarely do I find the motivation to do it after 8:15pm. I have yet to actually try getting up earlier than 5:00am (eep!). I considered joining the gym affiliated with our agency for lunch treadmill time but that entails me bringing another bag on my commute and, worse, having to re-do hair and makeup a second time during the day. I just can't bring myself to do it.

So, I guess I am left wondering where I can squeak in another 30 minutes in my day. Right now I am thinking if I want to do this race and have it be successful, I need to go to bed earlier (hence shortening my only "me" time) and get up 40 minutes earlier. My other option is to accept defeat and drop to the 5k which I know I can totally do on just weekend training runs. I really don't want to do that though but I know I will not have a successful 10-mile race on only weekend training runs. With such little time to devote to the boys during the week I am not willing to compromise it. I know eventually they will be older and doing their own things and this won't be as much of a thing, but right now, it matters.

One other thing this has me thinking seriously about is how much of my time I spend commuting. If I could get back even an hour of that 2-2 1/2 hours I spend each day, that would be amazing. Considering my options on that. I will keep you all posted on how this goes.