I just finished my last tri of the season and I was told to take a week off before starting off season training and preparing for a marathon. I’ve taken this advice and haven’t been doing much, and nothing tri - specific (I’ve played some tennis and basketball). Anyway, I normally get up at 4:30 in the morning and start my workouts. This week I can barely drag my ass out of bed at 7:30 and I feel exhausted all day. Is this like in college where you pull all nighters preparing for exams and then as soon as you get done your body relaxes and that’s when you get sick? Is it normal to feel this way when coming to the end of your tri season?
7:30 Makes perfect sense. I’ve found that I have a sleep cycle of roughly 1:30, and some research suggests this to be pretty nominal. Meaning that, if you normally wake up at 4:30, your body would either want to wake up at 6:00 am or 7:30. When do you crash at night? And the more sleep I get, the less the effect is (after 8 hours my body doesn’t care what cycle it is on). During the school year when times get rough, I try and either wake up earlier to hit a cycle (4.5 hours - hopefully not the 3 hour one) or go to bed later. The former works better.
HTH,
Daniel
That makes sense. I’m still going to bed about 10, 10:30 so I was on 1.5 cycle with about 6 hours of sleep. Just seems odd that I’m so much more exhausted when I take time off as opposed to when I’m in training.
Just finished my last race on Sunday. Decided to take it very easy this week, Monday off, Tues/Wednesday, 3-4 miles each. Today I ran for barely 30 minutes and my legs feel like dead weight. If I didn’t have to go to work, I could sleep A LOT right now. Really strange feeling, isn’t it. I was worried about it, but after today I have decided I’ve earned it and I’m just going to enjoy it!
You could honestly be that zonked. 6 hours a night and decent training (I assume!) may have drained the battery pretty low. Your body may have adapted mostly, but now it has the opportunity to get a “normal” amount of sleep and is responding to adaptation. It may be just that your body needs a quality recharge. How long can you sustain this extra sleep?
Purely anectdotal, but nominally I get 7.5 hours sleep, but during certain parts of the year, that number decreases significantly. I hardly feel the effects of the lack of sleep until I return to my 7.5 hours. Then I feel like a zombie for a few days until usually that weekend where I blow off the Sat morning exercise and sleep up to 13.5 hours (PR for me). Then life returns to normal. Might be the same for you.
Daniel