[trailrunner85]

Curious if there are any other endurance athletes out there? Do you find any correlation between difficulty with sleep on hard workout days? I am training for a trail 50k and powering through long runs (3-4 hrs) on low sleep has been rough. Then, I often sleep poorly that night also.

I am nearing my peak week of training before my taper and find the stress of my training is preventing me from starting the 6 week course. I am doing “okay” with sleep but want to do the longer course while dropping my sleep aid. Mentally, I am struggling with the idea of “increasing the struggle” by dropping my sleep aid prior to race day.

[Bronte]

I’m not an endurance athlete but I can empathise with trying to come off sleep aid. I admire your training toward the 50K trail and have no idea how you do it on poor sleep, you deserve a medal already!

It sounds like you are doing fairly well with your sleep and I recognise the bad nights in anticipation of something important the next day. I think the stage you have to reach is not caring about sleep anytime. You have been functioning amazingly well without great sleep and that’s what you need to keep reminding yourself of. I don’t need sleep to live my life fully – I’m going to do it anyway. Those thoughts help to reduce the importance of sleep and reduce your attention to it.

I know how hard it is to give up sleep aid meds and yes it adds to the layers of negative thinking when you go to bed without taking them. I found it to be a gradual process. I told myself that these pills are just a placebo and I don’t need them. If I had any sleep without them that would give me confidence that I don’t need them. It’s such a great feeling to be without them. The other thing that can help is to take them every other night when you start and then you can tell yourself ‘it doesn’t matter if I sleep badly tonight because I can take a pill tomorrow night’. If you then sleep on the off night then that confirms you don’t need them!

It’s all about reducing the fear around sleep. Stop caring about it and focus on life, concentrate on your 50K trail and put sleep in its place. You are going to do it and you will do it well, regardless of your sleep. Good luck!!

[Martin Reed]

Endurance training like you mentioned is going to be taxing on the body, as you already know! We can sleep well before intense exercise and we can sleep poorly before intense exercise. We can also sleep well after intense exercise and we can sleep poorly after intense exercise.

Does your experience tell you that sleep is under your direct control — that you can make the exact amount and type of sleep you want to happen through effort?

If not, perhaps the ongoing use of a sleep aid might be what’s increasing (or maintaining) the struggle — rather than the idea of coming off it?

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