Sleep

    To sleep, perchance to dream. To dream? There is no question that I dream, have dreams. Grand, glorious dreams that grow, multiply, consume, relieve the banality of day to day living. But to sleep? Not so much. As I search and research the ways and means to improve my physicality, fitness and performance I keep coming across the one aspect of my training that I am chronically lacking: Sleep. As I dial in nutrition, workout regimens, gear, mindset, the one vital aspect that I can't seem to factor into the equation is sleep. Did you know that professional endurance athletes sleep 9 to 11 hours a day? I am lucky to get 7 hours of broken sleep. True, I am not a professional athlete, training for half the day, but that does not mean I don't need the healing power of sleep. It is the off season, when I need to be building speed and strength, and allowing my body to rest and recover if I am to see any gains, and not burn myself out. But with my current schedule I am doing the equivalent of 2 endurance events nearly every weekend, as well as trying to keep my swimming and running on track. I workout in the evenings, after work, and am often still hard at it at 8:30 or later, eating dinner at 9:00, and trying to get to sleep before 11:00. Then I am awake at 6:15 to start it all again. In the past I have used my weekends to play catch-up on sleep, now my weekend alarm goes off at 6:30am, and I am pushing myself hard physically for about 7 hours, home at 5:30, trying to get in a run, eat a healthy, massive dinner, and then spend some time catching up on chores. I feel like the hamster in the wheel, running, running, running, getting nowhere fast, until I falter and am flung off the wheel into a pile of cedar shavings and hamster poo.
    Beyond the lack of measurable gains, too little sleep during training can result in severe burnout, chronic fatigue, and injury. Not to mention spaciness, grumpiness, and the overwhelming desire to fall asleep with my face on my keyboard at work. My most noticeable ill effect has been fatigue, bone deep fatigue. I have trouble mustering the energy to put in a grueling workout, and am not recovering as easily as usual. I am trying to rethink my standard plan of attack. I think I will have to tailor my weekday workouts based on just how exerting my weekend was. I kind of hate this, I like to plan further ahead than that. Maybe what I will do is design two alternate workout schedules, one for a recovery week after a hard session at the academy, the other a more standard workout after either an easy weekend or an off weekend. As if all this self-coaching wasn't complicated enough! But one thing I need to schedule in, as if it were any other workout, is sleep. I need to prioritize rest so that my body can properly recover, restore, build, increase,  improve. The healing power of sleep, not a myth.