Chris Wragge Is Out of His Mind

This week, CBS’ Chris Wragge is starting his day at 3:45am as he fills in for Harry Smith on “The Early Show.” Wragge ends his day after anchoring the 11 O’Clock news for WCBS-TV in New York, and smack in the middle he anchors the hour-long 5pm news.

TVNewser caught up with him during a few spare minutes to see how he’s holding up. “I’ve done this a couple of times for just a few days,” he said. “But this time it’s a little bit much.”

For the rest of this week, Wragge will be doing all three programs along with various other duties he’s been assigned: “This week is a little bit different. I have to shoot a promo for The Barclays for CBS on the golf course tomorrow. So I’ll probably sleep in the car. Wednesday, I have a CBS News shoot that’s September 11th related. (Sighs) We’ll get through it.”

We asked him how he does it. Diet and exercise appear to be key: “Gotta have a good diet. I start building up the week before like a runner training for a marathon or Lance Armstrong for the Tour De France.”

“I gotta tell you, this is a tremendous opportunity and I’m extremely flattered,” he adds. Wragge is very aware of the fortune he has. “It takes me two-three weeks to recover, but no one else in the country has that kind of opportunity. Especially when you consider what’s happening to a lot of people in this industry.”

After the jump, you can actually see a breakdown of Wragge’s entire day and it’s enough to make us want to pass out just reading it.