This morning, I planned to run 10 miles with a friend at 5:30 a.m. Last night, I laid out all my running clothes and gear I would take with me and set the alarm on my Garmin for 4:45 a.m. I’m notoriously a “late to bed” person. My head didn’t hit the pillow until after 11 p.m., but I quickly fell into a deep sleep.

I was awoken at some point by my husband’s voice: “When were you supposed to go running?”

I could tell by the light coming in through the window that something wasn’t right.

“What time is it?” I asked in a panic.

“7 a.m.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I had set the alarm on my Garmin Vivosmart, which vibrates to wake me up without waking up Mr. rUnladylike in the wee hours of the morning before the sun has even considered rising. I typically set the alarm on my iPhone as a back up 5 minutes later, but for some reason I didn’t because the Garmin always works. Lo and behold, it didn’t sync with my phone before I went to sleep and never went off.

I checked my phone and was welcomed by a text from my friend who thought I might be dead in a ditch somewhere but was going to go ahead and start her run without me. I apologized profusely – as I’m not typically an unreliable running partner – and proceeded to go back to sleep for an hour.

Suddenly, I was somewhere else completely.

I had moved to Chicago and was in a house with several people, one of whom looked like elite runner and Olympic marathoner Ryan Hall but was not actually Ryan Hall.

We had recently gotten married. I got into my car and was driving around downtown Chicago when I suddenly realized I didn’t know his favorite color, or his favorite food or even his birthday. All I could think about was how I knew all those things about Mr. rUnladylike and I wasn’t even excited to marry him like I was with Mr. rUnladylike more than six years earlier. I could feel myself starting to have a panic attack in this car that was not really my car.

Then I woke up. Whew!

The moral of this story is, do not sleep through your run or you might find yourself married to a Ryan Hall look-a-like with your life in shambles, left only to feel guilty about missing your workout and stressed to find time to fit it in later that day. Let this be a lesson to you. Hee hee.

Happy running.

Do you have any horror stories of sleeping through your alarm before an important run or race? What do you eat before weekday morning runs when you get up with less time before your run?