In Which Jenn Freaks Out About Race Morning Alarms

I skirted the edge of an honest-to-God panic attack the night before the 2016 Wine & Dine Half Marathon.

Not because I was nervous about my performance. Not because I was missing any part of my gear. Not because I was sick or injured.

I was terrified of sleeping through my alarm.

To review: I had three alarms set on my phone. I also set up a wake-up call. But then I worried about sleep-answering it and/or sleeping turning off all the alarms. So I set ANOTHER alarm. Then I tried to add a second wake-up call, but as it turns out the automated system won’t let you do that.

I was alone in the room, and there’s no one unrelated to your race you can reasonably ask to give you a call at 3am to make sure you’re awake. Out of options, I started to get the shakes. My mind was racing. What if I missed the race??? It was Daylight Savings Time clock change night – what if my phone failed to update? What if the wakeup call system failed to update?? I flew ALL THE WAY DOWN HERE and I LOVE these races and what if I slept through all my alarms and missed it and wasted all that money and didn’t get to run and and and????

You may recognize all this as Totally Unreasonable Behavior. I know this. But ever since I very nearly slept through the Marine Corps Marathon I’ve been hyper-paranoid about the possibility. It’s bad enough under normal circumstances, when I have Pat or a friend around to sync alarms with and make sure I’m up, but when I fly solo I get really nervous. In this one particular case, heart-poundingly nervous.

I managed to calm myself down enough to get a couple hours sleep and ultimately woke up with my alarm no problem, but I do wonder: does anyone else have this crippling fear? How to you handle it? What extra insurance do you put in place to ensure you get up on time? And does anyone want to be my race morning text message buddy?

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