The Week That THIS Happened.

Usually we have only one reason to wake up before 6 am. Race day.

That changed this week.

Mr. T. began the week with resolve, and as a result, he rolled out of bed by 5:30am for five consecutive days and before 7 am on the weekend.

I'm pretty sure I saw a pig fly by the window as I hit my alarm clock a bit later each day.

This change mattered this week and yielded some pretty nice benefits. First of all, he did not wake up early arbitrarily. He had a plan each day. A couple of days he swam. A couple of days he lifted weights. One day he woke up early to roll out sore muscles. (That one still baffles me.) Every day he did something that he normally wouldn't do, and as a result, he had a decent workout or part of a health-related plan completed before he slid into his cube at 7am, ready to will numbers into submission at the white-collar job.

I also noticed some pretty nice benefits.

I am by nature a morning person. Unless I went to bed uber late (like past midnight), I wake up pretty cheery and talkative for the most part, and that's before the first cup of joe. Jason, not so much. His mother told me shortly after our wedding that she learned early in his teens to just not talk to him until he'd had time and warm meal in his daily history. She was right. He's a surly fellow when he hasn't had his coffee. But this week, by the time I rolled out of bed each day, he'd had not only a workout but also at least one big, black cup of java love and breakfast. And he was nicer. He talked and even smiled a few times. We both went to work with a little lighter step than those mornings when we just would walk through the house with blank stares often interpreted as scowls.

As a result of Jason waking up early, the insomniac demons that often plagued him have all but disappeared (except for Saturday night when an early evening trip to Caribou Coffee stole his beauty sleep). Mr. T. goes to bed much earlier than before, as in, when he's tired, instead of staying up. He turns off the phone and the tv and hits the hay.

 And while I admit, I miss his company at night, I appreciate the pleasant mornings much more than just having someone share the same air with me while I grade papers. It's a great payoff for me, the loving wife, as well.

This new habit might seem so obvious to the smart people out there.

We weren't smart people last year.

During the official twenty-week ironman training plan, we strength trained maybe twice, and we often fostered lousy sleep habits. Quite frankly, it's a miracle that we didn't sustain any injuries.

I'm excited to see where these new habits will go, if he can continue to foster this great habit, and how it will affect him in a few weeks.

More on that next week.