The logic is get to a race in a very different time zone as close as you can to the race or over a week to let your body go through the jetlag process. Three days you will just be starting to feel the suffering. Good article from Sutto here...

http://blog.trisutto.com/?s=flying+travel+time+zone+racing

Is it enough? There are a lot of variables.

• How well do you travel?
  
• How well do you sleep in planes and when traveling generally?
  
• How long is the race? If you will be racing through the night (or even two nights), it's different to running "only" 50 or 100 km.

It's only a 6 hour difference, so it could be worse. Having said that, flying east is reputably more difficult.

My strategy is to get some exercise in before flying, sleep as much as possible on the plane and set your routine immediately around the local time zone. And don't stress about it. Just relax and enjoy the race.

Whoop came out with an article on mitigating the effects of jet lag awhile back. I can't speak to how well these methods work, but it might be worth checking it out

https://www.whoop.com/...-effects-of-jet-lag/

I believe the Sutton article says the same thing and it's get to the race as close as possible to start. Unless you have like 7 days to acclimate, then it'll be harder to adjust in that 3-5 day timeframe. NYC timezone isn't as bad with the 6 hour difference, but going East is rough and usually takes longer to adjust. I've done pretty good races flying in the day before the race going West - Marathon last October in CA (coming from London). I thought I was tired, but I actually ran pretty well with a negative split and BQ.

I usually try to fly into European based Ironmans the Saturday morning, get all my registration done, sleep, wakeup and race on Sunday.

If the race is on Saturday, try to leave NY and arrive on Friday early morning, get your registration done and rest. You'll be tired from the travel but your fitness will be there. Nobody sleeps that well before a race day anyways. Enjoy the trip after the race!

May times, though I have never done a race. That might be slightly different. At least I can share my personal travel experience, which is echoed by family and colleagues I have traveled with. You will probably be mostly fine, if you manage your arrival day.

The gist is that you will leave the U.S. in the evening Wednesday and arrive very early Thursday morning in Europe. If you are like me, and everyone else I know, you will not sleep well on the plane. It is essential that you do not go to sleep when you get to Europe, though it will be extremely tempting. Do whatever you can to stay awake on Thursday until around 5:00 PM. You will be more tired than you can imagine. Then, go to bed after an early dinner Thursday, and you will sleep like a freakin' rock Thursday night and probably wake up Friday morning at normal time for Europe. Boom, you will be mostly acclimated after that one stay-up day and the long night of rest. It is not perfect, but you will probably get tired Friday evening around 9-10 Europe time and sleep normally. Wake up Saturday AM and race.

So a couple of things... generally the rule is a day per hour in terms of adapting, so if it's a 6 hour difference, 6 days to adapt or so... On the flip side, if you get in just before the race, and don't bother trying to adapt, that also works... For Norway from Boston, I would say your best bets are either arrive 2 days before the race, or arrive a week before the race, anything in between, and you'll likely feel like crap for your race... if you truly can't avoid arriving 3 days out, I would suggest, as best possible adapting your sleeping and eating schedules pre-departure to match Norwegian hours, to try and kick start the adaptation by a few days...

Other things, it's always easier to travel west than to travel east... so unfortunately coming back will be a lot easier than going (I find personally traveling east I need to add at least a day to that one hour per timezone...).

The other thing worth noting is that in the summer, when you're that far north, you're going to get insane amounts of daylight, which is probably a big plus for the night time portions of an ultra... Last july (mid july), I had daylight for a quick run at 3:30am in Stockholm, before flying back to Canada... And the sun only set around 11pm, so we were on close to 20hours of daylight, and not as far north as you'll be... That said, that extra daylight can mess with being able to sleep and adapt to the time change as well...

We did our third Ironman in Copenhagen this past August flying from Vermont to JFK and then to Copenhagen. So the rule of thumb I've heard is you need a day for every hour of time difference. Unfortunately I learned this AFTER we booked out tickets. We arrived in Copenhagen Wed in the middle of the day completely wrecked from a long layover in JFK with a 2 hour delay. The race was Sunday. I never felt fully recovered from the jet lag. I wish I had arrived at least 7 days prior for a European race. Lesson learned.

That being said I still had a very good respectable race. Heck I even had a PR in the bike and marathon (3:36). But I do wonder if I had been acclimated to the time change, could have I gone a little faster? Maybe.... It was still an amazing race experience. I'm in my late 40s so that didn't help. When I was younger I used to live in Ireland and traveled back and forth to the US and hardly ever noticed jet lagged. I wasn't racing back then but I always felt good going both directions. Aer Lingus used to have free adult beverages back then so maybe taking advantage of that helped :-)

If/when we race in Europe again, I'll make sure we fly in a week before the race. Just my 1 cent...

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I have fewer issues with my sleep schedule than I do with my gut schedule. I find it hard to describe the terror of not being able to shit pre-race because my gut is still 8 time zones behind the rest of my body...

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Eliot
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Melatonin + Run 20 or 30 mins when you arrive.

Worked for me everytime from BC, Canada (was home) to UK (original home).

I now get almost zero jetlag.

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Best advice, the time change is the least of your things to think about or expend energy worrying about it. Live by the time zone you're located in. If you arrive in the day time, get moving and living. A workout does wonders in energizing the body to local time. Hit the bed early that evening and wake up and live to your normal schedule based on local time. Focus on getting ready for the race. Once you start racing, you'll think of anything but the time change. Lived overseas for 4 years and raced the world for another four years. No difference going east or west. Live life on local time, you'll race just fine.


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I did something like this for a recent trip to Africa (not for a race) from the US East Coast and it worked pretty well. On the staying awake on arrival part - it helps to go outside and get some sun.

Also it helped that my sleeping time was early in the US already. The OP can perhaps begin shifting his sleep/wake time a few hours earlier to help.

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1) crap sleep on the plane Wednesday night (even if first class, if economy forget it)
2) Thursday you won't be able to go to sleep -or- go to sleep on an "afternoon" nap on your body and wake up wide awake around 11pm
3) friday morning you should be quite exhausted after 2 nights of lousy sleep.
4) Friday night you want to rest well to wake up I am assuming 3am Saturday to race ( going to be like starting the race 9pm Boson time)

Wouldn't expect much more performance than just completing.

Good Luck, just keeping it real on the advice.

(Edited to cut out my first comment about waking time. Wasn’t thinking straight and guess why? You got it, crap sleep due jet lag)

I'm doing something somewhat similar - going from Boston to race IM Norway at the end of June. We're leaving Boston on a Monday evening, arriving in London Tuesday morning, then flying to Copenhagen a few hours later. We stay at a hotel at the airport on Tuesday in Copenhagen and then fly to Stavanger on Wednesday. We will have two young kids along (2 and 6), so I'm hoping for the best in terms of jet lag and acclimating to the new time zone. I guess I'll let you know on July 1st how well this actually went!

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Good luck!