Sleep deprivation... the real challenge

Wow, sleep deprivation seems to be the real enemy. After two nights of running and one 5hour time change, sleep is becoming a problem. Today at dinner our Team (consisting of Mary, Shiri, Emmanuel, and myself) were pretty much out of it; we were totally silly, and one might even say delirious. The last 2 day combination was a killer. on Sunday after being up from midnight and running 3am-9am, we drove back to the hotel, showered, packed, and drove to Boston where we had our first big Blue Planet Run event. That was at noon, then the entire team met at one of the hotels in Boston and we all then drove to the airport for our flight to Ireland, which was at 7:15pm. The five hour flight wasn't actually too bad, but then we arrived in Shannon a little after 6am local time. I can't sleep much on transportation, so of course I didn't. After having a breakfast at a hotel where most of the teams are sleeping tonight, out team Silver got into the van again and drove about 2 hours to a different hotel, since that's closer to where we'll be starting at 3am. I was navigating so of course no sleep again. Anyway, I just got back from dinner and am pretty exhausted. It's 6:20pm, so I'll probably get to sleep from 7 to midnight. Whoa, 5 hours sounds pretty good. Only 2 more nights of this night running craziness. It is, though, a lot of fun. For example, hanging at 4:30am in Providence in Rhode Island while waiting for Emmanuel to finish his 10miler and see him hand it over to Shiri, but you know, it's tough.

However, I do have to mention my excellent run on Sunday 7:30-9am (before picture below). As described, I was pretty tired by then, so I drank a can of Red Bull, put on a new jersey and shorts, toasted with Mary with water (and shared "the message"-more about this in later blog entry), and off I went. And it was amazing!!! Running though these picturesque New England towns, road winding up and down, the lead vehicle leap frogging by me... It was great. Plus, on the end of my run, I was greeted by a crowd of about 30 -my team, the new team that was taking over, about 10 locals, and some people from our PR agency and the foundation... they all were cheering me on as I finished. Quite exhilarating.
On Wednesday morning I'll have the 4:30-6am run and I'm planning to bring my digital camera along to shoot some life videos and pictures during this sunrise run. I'm looking forward to it. It's amazing what I get to do... Water is life, and life is good in Ireland.