I’m not a natural morning person. I should be – I go to bed early which you’d expect would mean that come 6am I’m ready and raring to go, but that’s not how mornings happen in my flat.

I go to bed early because I like to sleep, and close behind how much I love sleeping is how much I love being in bed, under the duvet awake, but with my eyes closed.

You might think, then, that I’m the last person that should be dishing out advice on how to get up early, but I disagree. Getting up early is the last thing I want to do. My alarm goes off at the start of the day and I immediately hope that there’s been some sort of administrative error. And this is why I’m writing this post. Because in spite of all that, I’ve been getting up pretty early to swim or run before work.

How early is early? Well, this is a bit ‘how long is a piece of string’ because my early isn’t your early and vice versa. But I hit the pool at 7am some mornings and to do this I have to get up an hour and a half earlier than if I was just going to work.

Preparation for such unnatural behavior must begin the night before. Get your stuff sorted before you go to bed to save vital duvet time the next morning and ensure you don’t forget anything in your sleep deprived stupor. Kit laid out, bag packed, knickers and bra double-checked (I’ve forgotten them in the past and had to ‘improvise’ at work). Also, if you need tea or coffee to get you going, pre-fill the kettle.

To ensure a swift transition from sleeping to getting out the door, you’re going to have to draw on all your marathon skills. Break it down and think only of the task immediately ahead of you. If I wake up and think about getting in a swimming pool, the snooze button immediately goes on. It’s just the same as breaking the marathon down into 5 mile chunks and only thinking about the miles you’re in – not the whole 26.2.

When the alarm sounds I think only about eating some cereal which is a bit more tempting than the ultimate goal which is submerging my body in some cold water. Cereal eaten I think about step two – getting dressed, step three – brushing teeth and before I know it I’ve got my goggles on and I’m diving in.

I give myself at least one proper lie-in a week – by this I mean not even a toe poking out from under the duvet until at least 9am. Thinking about this helps on a Friday morning when getting up early is not at all tempting.

I got sent a Lumie Zest wake-up light recently to help with my early starts. The GB swim team have these apparently and so for at least the first 15 minutes of my day I can tell myself I’m following the same training routine as the pro swimmers. The first day I tried it out I woke up facing away from the light, which didn’t help much. The second time I woke up from dreaming that I was in a sunny Thailand and the next few times worked pretty well. It’s not easy getting up when it’s still dark outside and tricking my brain into thinking it’s already light seems to be helping a bit.

If it could switch the kettle on and pedal my bike the mile to the pool my life  would be the be greatly improved.