This story is from The Pulse, a weekly health and science podcast.

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Growing up in Yardley, Pennsylvania, Corinne Carlson loved sports. She played tennis, soccer, and was even on the bowling team in high school. 

She started college at Temple University in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She didn’t have many opportunities to explore the extracurriculars Temple had to offer. 

“I was in my parents’ basement that entire year and I was like, when I go for my sophomore year, I’m going to join something,” she said.

Carlson was determined to get involved at Temple once she was able to live on campus. She went to the club fair and saw the women’s rowing team was recruiting new members, no experience needed. 

“I was like, ‘Oh I’ve never rowed before, but this might be something that I’m interested in.’ So I remember, I went to tryouts, made the team, ended up loving it,” Carlson said.

Carlson rowed for Temple for three years, and she is spending her last year rowing at the University of Delaware, as she also studies to get her master’s degree in hospitality and sport business analytics.

Becoming an early riser

When Carlson first start rowing, she had a rude awakening when she realized how early she had to get up for practice. 

Carlson goes to bed at 10 p.m. and wakes up at 4:45 a.m. every morning.

But to wake up that early, she must set herself up for success the night before.

She plans out her day to make sure she’s in bed early. 

“I know that if I don’t get enough sleep, I’m not going to perform well the next day whether that’s athletically, academically, cognitively. I just know I’m not going to have the best day I could set myself up for if I don’t get enough sleep,” she said. 

This sleep schedule cuts into her social life. 

“When I’m hanging out with my friends who aren’t on the team … I talk about rowing all the time. So, they’re aware of what I do every day.” So Carlson says it’s no longer a shock when she has to head out of the hang out early to get to bed. 

As a graduate student, she has other responsibilities, like homework and studying for exams, which can keep her up later than she wants. She says, “those days were kind of long and stressful … the days that I knew I didn’t get enough sleep.” 

Carlson says her “fatal flaw” is scrolling on social media at night. But she takes some precautions. She puts her phone on night mode.

“I do have that function on the iPhone that it turns off… blue light past a certain time. Mine is set for 8 p.m. So after 8 p.m. my phone doesn’t emit blue light … But I do scroll on Instagram and TikTok for a little bit before I go to bed.”

She gets herself ready the night before by laying out her clothes, so she can hop right up and into them when she wakes up. 

Morning wakeup

Another step in her getting-ready process is setting up a handful of alarms to wake up.

“I’m a big fan of setting more alarms than necessary in case the first five don’t go off, the sixth one is definitely going to go off. So I set a whole bunch of alarms. I’m always up on the first, but just in case on that small chance it doesn’t go off, I have a few others.” 

Thanks to her multiple alarms, Carlson has never been late to practice. She tends to get up immediately upon the first ring because she doesn’t want to risk falling back asleep. 

To get ready for practice, she usually puts on some “hype music”. 

“I’ve got to get the cobwebs out of the ears in the morning,” Carlson said. 

She’s a big fan of listening to Beyoncé and Taylor Swift while both getting ready and heading to practice. 

A bus picks her up at 5:20 a.m., and she heads to the Christina River in Wilmington, where her team practices. It’s still dark outside when she arrives to practice. 

Sunrise on the water

“It’s just funny. We’re halfway through practice and it’s still dark. And I’m like, I know all my friends are still asleep.” 

Carlson has gotten used to rowing in the dark now, but says it was quite an adjustment at first.

“Sometimes you can’t see half the things, and a lot of the times, there’s debris in the water. So it can be a little bit dangerous in the dark, but you just got to make sure you have lights on the boats.”

Her team has indoor and outdoor practices. For indoor practices, she’s in the field house next to the river. She describes the atmosphere of the practice as being flooded by fluorescent lighting. 

“It’s bright. It’s as if it’s like noon that day, which is kind of good. It kind of wakes you up right away. But going from pitch dark to super bright, it’s like, ‘Oh, time to lock in, time for practice,’” she said.

For the outdoor practices, Carlson says there is one main perk of waking up early. 

“Honestly, watching the sunrise on the rivers just makes it worth it a lot of the time, because it’s so beautiful and it’s something that only a few people get to experience … You can’t compare that to anything else.”