Thursday, March 15, 2012

Daylight Savings Time: There Goes the Sun

All winter, I've gotten up before the sun and gotten in my early morning miles. Each day, the sun has risen a little earlier (literally ~1 minute) and only recently has it become light for the entirety of my runs. Spring has arrived! (Officially, according to the calendar, it comes next week.) Until last weekend, when 1:00 Sunday morning magically became 2:00 Sunday morning and all my hard work was wasted. (And an hour of precious sleep lost!)

I realize, of course, that my efforts in the early mornings have nothing to do with when the sun rises. My steps don't bring the sun up earlier. But after weeks of darkness, the early sun seems well deserved. We earned this light. And then, just like that, it's taken away. It's cruel, like running 18 miles of a marathon, and then someone grabbing you off the course and transporting you back to the start so you have to do it all over again. Now we're in the dark again (until after 7 am!!), and back to the slow process of waiting for the sun to come up.

DC is trying to make up for the annoyance of Daylight Savings Time with a pseudo spring (close to 80 degrees today) and the cherry blossoms blooming. And while I will admit winter is also annoying because of the cold and the bleak and dreary landscape, the thing I hate most is the darkness. So warm weather and flowers won't win me over. If we put it to a fight, who would win: darkness or the cherry blossoms? In a rock, paper, scissors style fight, darkness covers cherry blossoms. And it's true, they don't look as pretty at night. (Although they do still smell. And not entirely pleasantly.)


Sorry cherry blossoms. You don't make up for the lack of sun.
In the coming days, the tourists will be out in droves, clogging up the running trails to see the blossoms. But I'll be out early, running through the darkness, with the trails all to myself, eagerly awaiting real spring and the return of the sun.

*If you think this is an over the top exaggeration, I'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning. Bring a flashlight.

Dream big, 
Teal 

1 comment :

  1. Teal, I feel the opposite of your pain. I see how you worked for those minutes of sunshine and I can't say I deserve mine, but when I run it's usually after work. The season works different than yours. As spring arrives I see more and more light at the beginning of my run. It's gets fairly tolerable and then right when st pats is getting near, blam! An hour of extra sunshine it's glorious! There is nothing better to motivate you to work on that forgotten new years resolution. As summer goes I begin to take the extra sun for granted and start running later, leaving the house, at 7:30 then 8:00. But slowly, no matter what I do the extra sun starts to creep away. At first I go into denial and find myself running in the dark at 8:00, but by September there's no denying it. I've lost the light. Just when it couldn't get any worse, blam, football season... And wait what were we talking about again?

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