Remember that ad about the Army, and how they accomplished more by 8 in the morning than most people got done all day? Well, the folks in fatigues just might have a hard time keeping up with some of this area's Super Moms: women who manage--not juggle, but manage, like Jimmy Carter liked to manage--jobs, kids, and long- distance running.

"It's all about time management," says Debbie Margraff (44), from Reston. "That and setting priorities."

Margraff should know. She has three kids, the oldest of whom is 14 and now her built-in babysitter. Only recently has Margraff been able to leave the kids alone while she runs, which happens to be at 5 in the morning, when the babysitter and his charges are sound asleep.

"I sleep until 6 before running on weekends," she says. "Early morning is the only time I'm not likely to be interrupted or overruled."

After her run, Margraff heads to work at Comcast. Weekends, well, we said she lives in Reston with young kids, so Margraff spends a lot of time at soccer games and swim meets.

Because the kids needed to report an hour before game time, Margraff took to running and biking while they warmed up. "And I used to just read at the pool while the kids swam, but it occurred to me that I could be doing a workout," she says. "So I started swimming." And that, of course, led to triathlons.

Did we mention that Margraff is a single mom?

"Some of the other parents look at me like I'm a lunatic," she admits. "And there are times when I feel guilty about doing something so self-centered. I could be doing PTA or the like. So I tend to volunteer a lot, helping with the swim team, being the cookie mom, that kind of stuff. I'm definitely over-committed, but you just do the best you can."

Margraff describes Anna Bradford, a mother of three boys and her occasional early-morning training partner, as "the only woman who is busier than me." Bradford is the president of Reston Runners, a club of 900 strong (and fit).

But organizational compulsion is the least of Bradford's vices. When she is not coordinating weekend runs for 120, she's training for ultramarathons--Bradford has run the last seven JFK 50 milers. This woman does marathons as training runs.

Bradford is a hospital social worker at INOVA Fairfax. "I work only 40 hours a week, so I've got plenty of time to run in the morning," she says without irony. Bradford sometimes rides her bike to work, the better to stay in triathlon shape.

Bradford's husband, a reluctant but consistent runner, and the boys (ages 16, 14, and 11), understand that life is one long race. "This running stuff started in 1989," Bradford says. "The boys know all of our PRs and are totally proud. They understand that this is what we do."

Patty Fulton (36), another single mom, is unique in that she has long been one of the area's top runners. Fulton works at the Department of Agriculture and logs most of her weekday miles during lunchtime on the Mall and along the Potomac River.

"I used to feel guilty about training so much," Fulton says. "But I'm convinced now that it makes me a better mom. Like anyone else, if I miss my run, I get cranky."

Recently Fulton fed cereal to her two girls, ages 5 and 7, before embarking on a 20 mile run on her treadmill. The girls entertained themselves in the next room for the two and one-half hours the workout took. "I think Alex [the youngest] was impressed," Fulton said. "She said, 'Mommy, you ran from breakfast until lunch!'"

Hilary Cairns and Kristin Pierce Barry are two more top runners who trained through pregnancy and returned to racing while hardly missing a beat. Cairns gave birth to her second child in January and ran 37:40 for 10K two months later. Barry, a lawyer, finished second in the D.C. Marathon, running 2:56:43 last March less than a year after her first child.

But just as motherhood is not all about diapers, neither is running all about the spoils. Sometimes it's about both. Ask Maria Kozlowski, from Washington, who has 2-year-old twins and a nine-month boy. While the twins made for a difficult pregnancy, Kozlowski ran and raced until two weeks prior to the delivery of her boy.

"I even won an award!" she says. "But nobody else was really running in my age group." Last April, with plenty of competition at the Boston Marathon, Kozlowski ran 3 hours 12 minutes, one minute off her personal best.

Still smitten with the racing bug, but with three infants in tow, Kozlowski and her running husband, Lance Crist, are forced to be efficient with their training (not to mention the day-to- day).

"I don't do any useless miles," Kozlowski says. On foot or otherwise; she regularly runs to work at the World Bank, usually tacking on a couple of extra miles to get in an honest workout.

On weekends, she and her husband swap parenting and training duties. Kozlowski meets her Washington Running Club training group for track work during the week and on Sunday mornings for a long run.

"[Lance] is just great," she says. "He got up at 5:30 to run so he could be back when I left to meet my group at 8."

Even when Crist is away, Kozlowski is loathe to miss a run--and even gets in strength training, with her baby jogger built for three.

"The kids like it for about 30 to 40 minutes, then they want to get out," she says. "But I'm about done at that point; it's quite a load."

Quite a load, indeed. One all should consider the next time we complain about getting out for a run.