To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub (Shakespeare as Hamlet said that, not me – and I’m not suicidal, I just like the quote). I worry my lack of sleep is negatively impacting my training (not to mention my thinking). The Runner’s World “Sleep Rule” states that a runner needs one extra minute of sleep per night for every mile ran per week. That means if you, like me, run about 30 miles a week you need an extra 30 minutes a night of sleep. 30 minutes in addition to my basic sleep requirements, egads! Not only do I not get the extra siesta time needed to compensate for my training, I don’t even get the minimal amount of sleep my body needs for regular life. I am accumulating a sleep debt at a rate of one to two hours a night. My legs are no longer responding to direct commands from my brain. I think they are too tired to listen.
We all know that a night’s slumber is restorative, yet in a busy schedule sleep is often one of the first things we sacrifice. For a runner, sleep is when we recover from our workouts. The possible consequences of sleep deprivation are scary. Banks and Dinges (2007) succinctly sum up the body of research, “laboratory studies of experimental restricted sleep in healthy adults suggest some mechanisms by which sleep duration may influence obesity, morbidity, and mortality”. Although the mechanisms under which sleep promotes health are not fully understood, adverse effects of deprivation are well-documented. Your endocrine, metabolic, immune, and cardiovascular systems may all be compromised if you deprive yourself of rest. For example, when you snooze the pituitary gland releases the all-natural HGH (human growth hormone), infamous for its banned performance-enhancing effects, which builds and repairs our muscle and bone tissue. No sleep, no growth hormone. The sleep-deprived also have increased odds of a “cardiovascular event”. Cardiovascular event is code for a 41.1K heart attack. I don’t want to be alarmist, but sleep doesn’t get the props it deserves. Banks and Dinges do note that people differ markedly in their responses to sleep debt, so some fortunate runners can get away with counting fewer sheep.
Inadequate physiological recovery means that an athlete will not be able to perform to their maximum capacity, they won’t recover as fully or as quickly, and they become more susceptible to chronic training fatigue, overtraining syndrome, and injury. Inadequate psychological recovery means that you may not have the will to run or you may not have much fun when you do put on those trainers. So it seems obvious, get a good night’s sleep! But what does that mean? Most people fixate on the time spent horizontal in bed, but there is more to a healthy sleep than the hours of rest. Charles Samuels (2008) nicely summarizes the key elements of our sleep-state that effect athletic performance and post-exercise recovery:
1. Sleep Requirement: The total sleep time is critical, but the required duration varies substantially among individuals. A lucky few are ready to run after a few hours, others can barely function on less than ten. On vacation, away from the demands of life, I naturally sleep the traditional eight-hours a night. That’s an indicator that my magic number is eight, plus the extra 35 minutes needed to compensate for training. That’s one out of three.
2. Sleep Quality: You may be sleeping for a long time, but are those forty winks high quality? Non-restorative sleep is characterized by sleep fragmented with periods of arousal without full-awakening or light sleep with recurrent awakening. I am a classic light-sleeper, awakened by even a light breeze. That’s two out of three.
3. Sleep Timing: We all have a preferred sleep cycle determined by both genetics and the environment. Often we can not match our circadian-driven sleep schedule to the demands of our lives. For instance, Night Owls like me are often forced to wake earlier than optimal for jobs and long runs, but have difficulty compensating by going to bed earlier than our cycle allows. As a result we miss critical periods of REM and slow-wave sleep. That’s three out of three.
Seems I have cause for concern. Although the night calls, my training goal for August is all about the eight-hour lie-down. Carbo-loading is out, sleep-loading is in.
Reference: Samuels, C. (2008). Sleep, recovery, and performance: The new frontier in high performance athletics. Neurologic Clinics, 26, 169–180.
Reference: Banks, S. & Dinges D.F. (2007). Behavioral and physiological consequences of sleep restriction. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 3(5), 519-528.
Title Reference: Robert Frost – Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. 1923.
