To sleep, perchance to dream

From my favorite bard:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

I love to sleep.  There is little I will not choose over sleep.  When I first started running, my friend S was not so much shocked by that as she was by me getting up at o'dark thirty to go run.  (She's still amazed by it.) 

Sleep has been one of my biggest obstacles to marathon training.  Waking up to go run, I can talk myself out of running in favor of going back to bed in record time.  As I sit here in my office (um, working.  Working very very very hard.), I can think of nothing better than heading out for a run.  The run I missed this morning in favor of going back to bed.  Granted, there was an excuse of a weirdly swollen and sore right foot when I woke up this morning -- no idea what happened, it's still somewhat swollen.  Like I'd been stung by a bee (heh, I typed "beer" the first time) or something. 

I don't know how to be a morning person.  I like my sleep.  Did you ever see the episode of Ally McBeal where her mentor was dying and wanted to be put into a coma for the remainder of her life so that she would be with the family she had created in her dreams?  I thought that sounded pretty spiffy.  I mean, if you're dying already. 

I've never run into any dream people more than once, but I do dream about the same dream locations.  I dream a lot about houses.  They have all these hidden passageways that lead to cool rooms, or I open a door I'd forgotten was there and find a room I didn't realize I had with all this old stuff in it.  I always think this is about parts of myself that I've lost or been cut off from.  When I started getting out more and doing more things about a year or so ago, and when I started blogging, I stopped dreaming so much about houses. 

So, I need to whip sleep into shape.  Keep it in its place so that it doesn't prevent me from doing the things I really want to do.  My question to you is, How do you win the battle of sleep versus exercise? 

Dreaming minds want to know.

Cheers,
the CilleyGirl