Go To Sleep Now!

Go To Sleep Now!


Bicycling |

Running Sleep

[quote]Late night last night. Still managed to get up at 4, knock out a 2 hour ride, and get the kids to school on time.[/quote]

VERSUS

[quote]Didn’t get enough sleep this week. Stayed in bed for an extra hour and missed my ride.[/quote]

Let’s say these two status updates showed up on your Facebook or Twitter feed. Which would get more “likes” or “retweets”? If you’re like many cyclists (and most South Africans), you probably admire the tough nut who fought through fatigue to complete their ride, and suspect that the slumbering beauty is a slacker.

Our society views sleep as a luxury, at best. Many people think that revealing your need for it marks you as a weakling, says John Caldwell, PhD, a psychologist who has researched sleep deprivation and fatigue for NASA and the military. “We think if you’re really a good athlete, that means you’re tough and you’ll take whatever life throws your way,” Caldwell says. “Part of being tough is not needing to sleep.”

By that line of reasoning, some of the country’s top marathon runners rank as total slouches. Our elite athletes pen naps in their calendars as ‘business meetings’, and log as much as 10 hours of shut-eye a night. They clearly understand what science is increasingly revealing: it’s during sleep that your body recovers from hard training and builds you into a better athlete.

Indeed, recent research suggests that just one night of bad rest can have an impact (albeit largely psychological) on your cycling performance. Meanwhile, chronically cutting your sleep short by even an hour per night has cumulative negative effects on your riding and your health.

“Sleep is as important as your workouts,” says coach Joe English. “When you start robbing from that pot to get everything else done, the quality of your training – and of everything else – starts to fall apart.”

Sleep Much?

Early-Running-Race-StartNo lab test can tell you exactly how many hours of sleep you need – the number varies widely by individual. But the average adult needs between seven and nine hours each night, says Dr Matthew Edlund, director of the Centre for Circadian Medicine, and author of The Power of Rest.

Not surprisingly, how much you train impacts how much you need to sleep, but it’s not a simple more-means-more equation. Research has linked moderate exercise to higher-quality, more efficient slumber ­– possibly by increasing levels of a compound called adenosine that promotes sleep. And so, people logging moderate mileage might actually need less sleep than those who don’t train at all. But as anyone who’s ever trained for a race can attest, sleep needs can change at the start of a new training programme or in the midst of a tough training cycle, says sleep researcher Cheri Mah.

There’s not yet a handy chart for correlating weekly mileage to required hours of sleep. Your body will probably supply some cues when you don’t get enough. You’re probably short on Z’s if you fall asleep the second your head hits the pillow, you find yourself dozing off during meetings or at the movies, you rely on caffeine to get through the day, or you hit the snooze button more than once.

“If your body is literally going back to sleep immediately after being asleep all night long, you’re probably not getting enough sleep,” says chiropractor Robert Oexman, the director of the Sleep to Live Institute.

Ignore these signals at your peril. “When you don’t obtain your required amount of sleep, it can build up like a debt, almost like a credit card,” Mah says. Most of us have racked some up – a recent survey revealed that about 40 per cent of Americans sleep six hours or less each night. “Over time,” Mah says, “that accumulated debt can affect performance and mood.”

While You’re Dreaming

Night after night of restricted (or interrupted) sleep – where you rest a little, but not enough – sets off a cascade of hormonal shifts with harmful biological effects. Within a week or two, you’ll have higher levels of the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein and the stress hormone cortisol, keeping your heart rate higher and your nervous system on constant alert.

Human growth hormone, which repairs muscle and bones, is secreted by your pituitary gland during deep sleep, says Dr Shelby Harris, director of the Behavioural Sleep Medicine Programme at the Montefiore Medical Centre. The less sleep you get, the lower your levels – and the slower your recovery from workouts or minor aches and pains. Your muscles’ ability to store glycogen for energy declines, meaning you risk running out of gas no matter how much you carbo-load, says Harris. There is also some research that indicates your risk for injury goes up if you don’t get enough shut-eye.

Being sleep-deprived doesn’t just make you tired, but also jittery, achy, and injury-prone. There’s no magic number of hours that protects you from poor performance or from cycling-related pains – again, everyone’s sleep needs differ, Dr Edlund says. But the more nights you get less than your required amount, the greater the potential consequences for your running.

And in the bigger picture, you’re probably harming your overall health, too. Sleep deprivation throws your hunger hormones out of whack, increasing levels of the hunger-inducing ghrelin and decreasing satiating leptin, Harris says, which in turn may cause you to eat more and gain weight. In addition, not getting ample sleep suppresses the immune system (leaving you susceptible to infection); your mood can sink down into the dumps; and your risk for developing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, rises.

Toss and Turn, Crash and Burn?

Caffeine-and-runningCyclists know insomnia is common the night before a big race. But they take comfort from this often dispensed piece of wisdom: “it’s not your sleep the night before a race – it’s the night before the night before that counts.” Anecdotal evidence bears this out. No one sleeps much the night before an Olympic race, says Paula Schnurr, who ran the 1 500 metres for Canada in the 1996 Summer Games. Few first-time marathoners rest well either, English says. But many perform well anyway, fuelled by race-day excitement and adrenaline.

Research supports this hypothesis, to a degree. When scientists keep people up all night and then ask them to cycle, lift weights, or run on a treadmill, they can do it just as well as when they’ve slept. But interestingly, they report that each kilometre or rep feels harder, and they often don’t want to make the effort. “In order to ride a good race, you have to be in a state of mind where you’re going to push it,” Caldwell says. “We’ve known for years that sleep deprivation typically doesn’t really affect absolute things like muscle contractions, speed, and power. But it definitely affects your willingness to perform your best.”

When you head out for a training ride sleep-deprived and with no cheering crowds or competition, these deficits could lead you to slack. As a result, you might not give your body a strong enough stimulus to adapt and improve your training, English says. What’s more, lack of sleep impairs cognitive function and reaction times, which could put you at risk of a collision if you’re crossing busy streets or ridding on a crowded path or rocky trail, says neurologist Dr Lev Grinman, the medical director at HomeSleep.

In fact, if you’ve slept fewer than about six hours, you might benefit more from staying in bed an hour longer than from forcing yourself to stumble out on a ride, says Shawn Youngstedt, PhD, an exercise physiology researcher. Even top coaches and athletes sometimes follow this guidance. Schnurr, who is also a track coach, says she can tell when her student athletes show up to training sessions without having slept well. She often modifies their workouts or sends them home from training entirely, knowing they wouldn’t reap the benefits of a tough run while sleep-deprived.

Many people can bounce back quickly from one or two nights of poor rest. But performing well gets harder the longer you’re deprived. “I’ve had some really good races after I didn’t sleep for one night, but I’ve never had a good block of training while sleeping poorly for a few months,” says athlete Bobby Curtis, who has suffered from bouts of insomnia.

Avoid an Energy Crisis

When Mah asked a team of basketball players to sleep up to 10 hours a night for five to seven weeks, they performed better on the court. She found similar results in swimmers, too. Now, spending almost half the day in bed isn’t a luxury most of us can afford – and it may not even be necessary. Your body’s optimal amount could be seven hours; it could be eight.

Harris recommends determining your ideal sleep pattern when you have a week-long holiday or other situation that doesn’t require a strict schedule: don’t use an alarm clock, wake up naturally, and take note of what time you went to sleep and got up. By the fourth day, you’ll have caught up on sleep debt; take the average amount of sleep you get on nights four to seven for a good estimate of your true needs, she says. Once you’ve figured out how much sleep your body naturally wants, schedule your bedtime in advance, just like you would any other commitment, Caldwell advises.

Mah says that cyclists can still benefit from ‘sleep-loading’ – getting extra shut-eye in the week or two before beginning a training program that ramps up your mileage. Committing to just half an hour more each night to pay off your sleep debt in between training cycles enables you to kick off a new programme refreshed and strong. “That’s half an hour less texting or checking your emails, or PVR-ing your favourite late-night show and watching it another time,” Mah says. And, of course, there’s the chance that you’ll feel so good during this period of time that you might decide to make an earlier bedtime permanent.

Experts also recommend tracking your sleep – just like you log your kays – in order to help you correlate your rest to your running performance (see ‘Sleep Aids’, below). While that won’t give you more hours in the day, it may help you place sleep and training on equal footing. “If you’re obsessed with logging your 400 kays, try to be as obsessed with logging your X hours of sleep a week,” English says. “When you do, it’s going to really positively impact the quality of your workouts.”

Keeping track can also help you recognise if something goes awry in your training. In a recent study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, athletes who overreached – or who ran more kays, or did more intense workouts, than their bodies could handle – showed disrupted sleep patterns, possibly because of an overactive autonomic nervous system (the part that controls your heart and other internal organs. If you’re unable to sleep well, it could mean you need to cut back or incorporate more rest days to absorb all the hard work you’re doing, says study author Yann LeMeur, PhD, of the National Institute for Sport, Expertise, and Performance in Paris.

Finally, monitoring your sleep habits often gives you a bigger-picture view of whether your goals correspond with your life at the moment, Harris says. If you’ve just had a baby and you’re also studying for a masters degree, for instance, now may not be the time to train for your gran fondo. “You really have to be realistic – maybe you just can’t get up at five in the morning to ride if you can’t go to bed until midnight,” Harris says. You don’t have to stop riding – remember, cyclists tend to sleep better – just consider whether you should scale back expectations, or ride for stress relief rather than trying to stick to an aggressive plan. On the other hand, if you have an ambitious goal – say, a multi day stage race event – plan it for a time when you can rearrange your life to accommodate the training and recovery necessary.

Your Brain On Z’s

In a full night’s rest, you’ll go through four stages of sleep, which make up a full sleep cycle that lasts 90 to 110 minutes. Adults usually go through four to six cycles of these stages each night. N3 and REM sleep play the biggest role in helping your body recover and repair itself, says Dr Lev Grinman, a sleep expert. It’s ideal to get through your first full cycle of all four stages uninterrupted – a reason you shouldn’t drift off on the couch and then move to the bed mid-cycle. And why parents with restless little ones might have an extra challenge feeling recovered from workouts.

Very light sleep (about 5 per cent of your night): this occurs when you first fall asleep, and again after each interruption. Your brain waves shift, your muscles relax.

Light sleep (about 50 per cent of your night): breathing and heart rate relax. It’s more difficult to wake you up.

Deep sleep (about 20 per cent of your night): the most restorative rest, this stage lasts for 20 to 40 minutes during the first cycle but decreases in length as the night wears on. Your body secretes human growth hormone, and it’s difficult or nearly impossible to wake up.

Rapid eye movement sleep (about 25 per cent of your night): your eyes, face, arms, and legs twitch, and your brain waves speed up again. Most dreams occur during this stage, and your muscles are paralysed so you can’t act them out.

 

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