I need a solid 8.5+ hours a night to stay “fresh”. Rarely do I get that much however, but I take whatever I can get. I often skip morning workouts to try to get extra rest in. It’s frustrating to skip a workout, but sleep always seems to pay off. I feel like I need a lot more sleep than most people, I always have. When work gets nuts (even before I get into the all-nighter phases) I find I fall asleep anywhere. I’ve fallen asleep getting my hair cut more than once, and I’m also known to sleep for 17 hours straight when I go too deep into rest debt. I love to sleep, but I hope that as I get older I’ll need less. We’ll see.
The Big EE shoots for 7 1/2 hours a night. Unless the Little EE decides to start crying and Mrs. Big EE is too tired to get up. In that case, the Big EE has midnight baby duty and gets more like 6 hours. Sometimes, the Big EE’s big dog starts to hog the bed, and then the Big EE gets more like 5 hours. Quite often, the Big EE gets up to run at 5 a.m., in which case he’s closer to 4 hours.
Basically, the Big EE should say the hell with it and never go to bed.
– Big EE
I try to be in bed by 10 pm every night and get up at 4:40 to run on the treadmill or ride on the computrainer by 5 AM for about an hour before breakfast. Some mornings I sleep in 'til 6:00 if I’m pretty wasted from a hard PM workout the day before. Afternoon naps for about an hour are a big help to catch up.
I work 12hr shifts (7pm-7am) on the days i work i get 4 hrs sleep than get up exercise and try to lay back down for 1-2 hrs. on the days i don’t work my rest is no better my body is use to being awake during the hours that is now time to sleep. i ave about 5-6 hours sleep per day.
Minimun of 5 hrs. if I want try and function at a reasonable level. Can get by on 6-7 hrs. for a few days… However, at some point I need at least one 8-9 hrs. of sleep time if my work load/stress loads is heavy.
Basicly if I’m tired and feeling sleepy, I will take a nap and avoid working out. It not uncommon I get more benefit from sleep than training at certain points during the training cycle process.
FWIW Joe Moya
I get 4-5 hours a day wed through sat. 8 hours on Monday and Tuesday. I work night shift, sleep between 9am and 1pm, train when I get up and then before going to work. Is it fun or healthy, no, but I don’t have much choice.
Collen
I slpet over 8 hours last night. I’m fully operational.
It’s always been 7 - 9 even when I was younger. It’s just getting more critical as I get older (53). What has helped is the discovery that a 15 - 20 minute nap in my office after the noon workout seems to give me energy 'till later in the evening. Somedays, and this might be a blood sugar thing, either I take my little nap or I am non-functional for a couple of hours. Thankfully, I have the luxury of an office with a door, and coworkers that for the most part respect the closed door.
“…the endorphines buzz around and really wreck your cycles. you might be able to close your eyes and slip away but a lot of times you skip rem like a flat stone on water…”
While I don’t skip REM cycles, I do tend to bounce off at the end of them right up to alpha wave land and find myself wide awake in bed right after dreaming (frequently lucid, which is a trip). While I do sometimes finish a workout around 8pm, I usually don’t hit the sack til about 11 and am well cashed by that time. Then it’s up at 6am the next day, ready to roll!
As busy as I was back in college, I used to go for weeks on end with three hours of sleep each night. Being on a three quarter system, our finals, ends of sports seasons, presentations, and performances all piled up at the same three times each year. My roomie and other friends used to comment on how much more calm and relaxed I seemed after breaks/vacations.
On the 6-7 hours/night, I find that even one night of less sleep will tip me over into depression. One of these years the children will begin to sleep through the night…
I’ve always been a night person, so my challenge is waking up at a decent hour in the mornings (7-8am). Can you say snooze? I usually go to bed around midnight or 1am nowadays, for an average of 6-8 hrs sleep per night. I very much notice that I need closer to 8 hrs/night when I’m training heavily with lots of anaerobic efforts and/or races. Else I start to feel groggy and my energy and performance declines. An interesting thing I’ve noticed is that if I sleep more than 8 hours a night for more than a few days in a row, I find myself getting really drowsy during the day. Weird…
One neat thing about Boise is that midsummer it stays light out until about 10:30pm. To escape the heat, I’ll sometimes train until dusk, which means by the time I’m done with all my post-ride rituals it’s darn near midnight. Guess I’m a bit strange in that I have no problem sleeping right after training, if I want to. =)
In my college days… I could go for long stretches of 3-5 hrs of sleep per night, with the occasional all nighters. Of course, I would usually crash hard on the weekends and not roll out of bed till 3 in the afternoon. Heh the vigor of youth (or is that folly?).