walk schedule

I was up at 4:30 this morning and walking by 5 a.m. As I discovered, leaving even that early meant getting hit by the morning sun. At 5 a.m., the sun is already out at this time of year. While not as bad as the afternoon sun, the morning sun was still uncomfortably warm. I had hoped to enjoy more of the remaining nighttime coolness. So I'm going to try a monk's schedule, waking up at 3 a.m. and going out the door by 3:30 a.m. By extension, that's going to mean hitting the sack by 9 p.m.—truly a Buddhist monk's schedule. I don't like living the life of a morning person since I'm not naturally a morning person, but if I'm going to continue to walk in the early morning throughout the summer, I don't have much choice. Either that, or I have to start walking at night.

Here's the problem, though: If I don't get a uni job by mid-July, I have no choice but to join a local hagweon. If I work at the hagweon part-time, and I choose to do the morning shift, that means starting at 7 a.m. and working until about 11 or noon. This in turn means that waking up at 3 a.m. to do my 10K walk is going to be cutting it too close: Wake up at 3 a.m., be out the door by 3:30 a.m., walk until almost 6  a.m., then take only one hour to shower, dress, and make my way across town to the workplace. Nope. That's not gonna work. To give myself a better time margin, I'd have to wake up at 2 a.m., which in turn means going to bed no later than 8 p.m. to get six hours of shuteye. Dr. Hodges used to wake up insanely early like that, getting up at around 2:30 a.m. I used to think that was nuts, and now, I'm considering adopting a schedule very much like his. Crazy.

2 a.m.: Wake up.
2:30 a.m.: Step out the door and start walking.
5 a.m.: Be back at my place. Shower & prep for work.
6 a.m.: Leave for work.
7 a.m.: Start work.

Again, the above assumes I end up working part-time at a local hagweon.