I hate the expression “sleep when you’re dead.”  Hate it.  I happen to like sleep.  It’s restorative and refreshing and needed and feels good.  “Sleep when you’re dead.”  I could clobber those people.

I always nap after my long runs.  Always.  For starters, they require I get up early.  Ridiculous, usually-reserved-for-masochistic-flights early.  4am early.  Do you know what 4am feels like?  On a Saturday?  For fun?  Runners are a special shade of crazy.

And then there’s the whole I just ran fifteen miles thing.  Good lord.  Reading that sentence makes me tired.

4am + fifteen miles = you bet your ass I’m napping.  Simple mathematics.

Except yesterday I didn’t.  I tried.  Oh believe me, I tried.  Did my whole routine: sucked down as many fluids as my body would tolerate, shivered and cringed through an ice bath, more fluids, food, a luxuriously long piping hot shower, clean pajamas, soft warm bed, slouched down with my laptop, cracked my toes, snuggled with Pick, all that good stuff.  It’s my Saturday routine.  I usually get up to eat again and then pass out mid food coma.

Except yesterday, for whatever reasons, my dad and my sister chose to ignore the whole I’m lying in bed thing.  With my eyes closed.  After a 4am wake-up and fifteen miles.  And they kept coming in.  With questions about who knows what.  After forty-five minutes of constantly interrupted dozing, I gave up.  Had some food (leftover spicy red curry — yum) and figured I’d get my nap later.

And then we did the pedicure thing, and the hobble around the men’s department green-lighting blazers and vetoing tacky shirts thing (I say hobble because that’s about all I’m capable of post-run and pre-sleep; my sister calls it my penguin walk), and the hobble some more around Sports Authority thing, and then I’m finally back in bed with Pick but it’s already 5pm which means Pops is cranking out daiquiris and really did I think I was going to nap rather than drink? you’re a Smith!, and then somehow I’m nominated to fetch dinner for everyone (since, thankfully, no one felt like going out to eat; I don’t think I could have kept my head up).  Enter a giant veggie burrito the size of my head, which I promptly scarfed in record time (beat Pops wolfing his — Freshy is reading this and going WHOA — we’re talking FAST), got back in bed, and couldn’t summon the energy to hobble to the family room to watch the show I had earlier decided would constitute my Saturday night entertainment (HBO’s Hung, for those of you who are curious; apparently the first season is on on-demand, which means I finally get to catch up on the hilarity I’ve missed).  Even closing the laptop and heaving it onto my desk (directly next to my bed) was a challenge; nor could I bother to un-stack my pillows so I could properly lie down, but rather slumped next to them.  And passed out HARD.  I think it was something like 7:43pm.

Woke up shortly before 1am, changed into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, soaked some beans (for today’s black bean & corn salsa), stretched, snuggled with snoring Pick, and cursed the neighbor’s dog who WOULD NOT SHUT UP, barking its head off at who knows what.  I mean, my entire neighborhood could have been held up at gunpoint for all that fucking dog was barking.  The skies opened, we finally (finally!) got a decent summertime downpour, I cursed the dog for the umpteenth time (unfortunately not daunted by the rain one decibel), and fell back to sleep.  Woke up this morning just before 8am, refreshed and feeling human again, although I prolly could’ve slept a bit longer if it weren’t for the dog, who was barking its head off.  AGAIN.  Or still.  I have half a mind to go over there and kick the owner in his face.

Long runs are one thing.  Actually, I’m getting quite good at them.  Yesterday was my strongest, fastest long run yet.  I felt like a beast.  But not getting a nap after a long run — brutal.  Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll get to sneak in another nap pre-festivities today.  Fingers crossed.

Update: NPR thinks more sleep will make me faster and stronger too. Booyah.