As athletes, many of us wake up quite early in the morning to fit our training and workouts in around family, school, careers, etc. Just on twitter this morning, a runner SKORA follows, tweeted “Went into work for a couple hours, got a quick workout in, came home and everyone is still sleeping.”
Even if you are not waking up at 4am to run, but waking at 7am for work or school, there is a type of “alarm” that you should very seriously look at. Recently Verilux provided SKORA’s resident ultra marathoner with their Rise & Shine Natural Wake-Up Light, for use and review.
Here is how the R&S works, in a nutshell. If you set the wake up time for 6am, the R&S’s lamp kicks in at 5:45am and very gradually brightens to a level that you set. There are also optional wake up sounds, such as flowing water or chirping birds, that can be set and will also gradually become louder as the waking time approaches.
For a couple months now, I have simply used the gradually brightening light without the chirping birds, and have not once woken up late. It is quite fantastic! Instead of being violently woken by the most annoying sound known to man, I simply…wake up. This is almost as good as sleeping in and waking up naturally. It feels so great to just, wake up!
This wake up alarm is very easy to use and the instructions provides are well written and simple. It just takes a few seconds to program the wake up time. One of the best features is that a sleep timer can easily be set on the lamp. So you can program it to gradually dim over a period of 5 to 60 minutes!
I would not hesitate to recommend the Rise & Shine to any person, athlete or not, who wants a more pleasant method of arising from sleep in the morning. In my experience, the wake up light has definitely been a pleasant experience and I will continue to use it instead of a conventional alarm clock.
The Rise & Shine Wake-Up Light can be purchased at Verilux.com