Hit the snooze

There are a lot of things in training and in racing that you can't control. You might get stung by a bee or step on a snake, for example. Or race day temps are unseasonably high. Maybe you get hit by a car, like DC Rainmaker. All sorts of uncool bad stuff can happen and how you handle it is not what I'm here to write about.

I'm blogging today about the things you can handle. The things you can control. If you get a stomach ache because you're trying something new on race day, that's your bad. If you chaffe because you just bought a new race out fit the day before your race - well you might look cute, but you're dumb. Don't do either of those things. Don't be dumb (let's see if DBD spreads like wildfire among internet lingo). If you're alarm clock mysteriously doesn't go off, it's your fault. And if you haven't realized it by now, yes EJ, i'm talking about you.

Far too often my buddy, EJ (follow him on twitter HERE follow his blog HERE), tweets about how his alarm fails and because he pushes his tweets to his facebook, it's looks like it's happening twice as much as it should. So the below, friend, is for you and all other would-be early AM athletes.

****HOW TO SET YOUR ALARM CLOCK****
by THE ryry

Out of the box, the Sony Dream Machine FM/AM CD dual alarm clock radio doesn't do much. This won't get you up. #pluginfail


Once you find an outlet and plug this bad boy in, it flashes between the pic below and the pic above. Still not going to get you up. #failtimesetfail


To set it, you have to hold down the 'clock set' (circled left below) button until the hours start flashing. Use the '-time set+' buttons to adjust the time (circled right). press clock set again to get the minutes to flash and adjust in the same manner as the hours.


Couple of things to keep in mind while your setting the time. #1 you want to set it based on a reliable source. you'll want to use something like your phone or the time on your DVR. If you want to kick it old school go ahead and dial 'popcorn' on your rotary phone (kidding, this will not work. if it did it would say 'at the tone, the time is now 2010'). the second thing is to make sure the time is properly set to AM or PM. I used my watch below to set the time. It's connected to satelites, i'll trust that over my microwave anyday. Note - green dot next to PM means it's set for PM. No green dot means AM.


Once you're comfortable with the time, it's time (pun intended) to get to work on the alarm. On my alarm clock, I press and hold the big "A" which stands for alarm A. Now the alarm time starts to flash. adjust similarly to the time set noted above. Note - AM/PM is also important here. Make sure your alarm time does not have the dot next to the "PM" if you want to wake up in the morning.


Now that the alarm is set, you have to turn it 'On'. My alarm has 3 options I can wake to #1 my favorite kelly clarkson CD, #2 boring morning show DJ's or #3 a beeping that gets progresssively louder. I prefer the beeping.



So there it is, my first 'how to'. Hope you enjoyed. =)

PS. yes, my alarm is actually set for 3:30AM tomorrow morning. =))