There probably isn’t a bigger impact on day-to-day life, at least in my experience, as the amount of sleep I get. Sleep is important in ways I can’t even describe — it seems like the universe works itself out better, I have more patience, I have more energy, and I’m in a better mood.
No shit, Sherlock, you might be thinking.
But in my quest for balance, I’m trying to find the best sleep schedule for myself. I get a good amount of sleep. I average anywhere from seven to nine hours of sleep a night, but that quantity can be extremely disjointed. Sometimes, I sleep six hours during the day and nap two hours during the day.
I used to lie to myself and think I could function perfectly fine with seven hours of sleep, even six hours of sleep. And sometimes, I could function well with seven to seven and a half hours of sleep, especially when I’m not exercising much. Some days, like a lot of people, I can’t sleep. I wake up super early after staying up late, without being able to go back to sleep.
I need more sleep as an athlete
But now I’m running and running a lot. This week, my coach tasked me with 75 miles of running. 75 miles! That’s a lot of time spent running. A lot of energy required. A lot of fatigue. A lot of sleep.
I can talk all day about the running, but I need to be at the higher end of the average amount of sleep required by medical experts. Athletes need more sleep than non-athletes, according Theresa Juva-Brown at Active.
Weekends are usually a time of reset and rest. However, this weekend was not. I couldn’t get anything done. I also couldn’t really have fun with anything I did. What could possibly be wrong? I was doing everything right — exercising, eating well, and more. Sometimes, a bad day is just a bad day.
But I could pinpoint one factor I wanted to change: sleep. It wasn’t like I wasn’t sleeping. I was just waking up earlier than my alarm, and maybe an hour or two earlier than scheduled. I got seven hours of sleep on Saturday and seven and a half hours of sleep on Sunday. That’s not the most amount of sleep in the world, but I thought it was sufficient.
It was not sufficient
I felt like a zombie all weekend. I couldn’t get anything done. I had to drive a lot, which didn’t help, but I couldn’t function like I normally do. Of course, I ran seven miles on Saturday and 17 miles on Sunday, so that probably contributed to the fatigue.
Today, I got nine hours of sleep. At work, I’ve felt invincible, at least compared to how I felt during the weekend. I got more done today than I did all weekend, and I feel like a more patient, kinder person to my students.
I want to get nine hours of sleep a night. But the challenge is often just not being able to fall asleep. It’s not uncommon for me to lie in bed for hours after a night of nine hours of sleep and just not fall asleep. It’s not uncommon for me to go to sleep at 9 p.m. and wake up at 1 a.m., and just not be able to fall asleep.
As a sleeper, I give up too easily
One thing I’ve realized about my sleep habits is I give up too easily. If I have my eyes closed in bed, and I haven’t fallen asleep in 15 minutes, I’ll give up and do something else.
One thing I’ve realized is I put a lot of pressure on myself to fall asleep and have a great day the next day. If I don’t, I get antsier and become even less likely to fall asleep.
I’ve gained a much greater acceptance and appreciation of the pre-sleep phase, of laying in bed with my eyes closed, but not quite slipping out of consciousness. It’s actually really nice when I think about it. It’s time to not be so active and “on” all the time. It’s time without obligation. It’s time to just rest and think, even if I’m not quite asleep.
. . .
And so my goal is to have nine hours or more per night in bed. Even if I’m not asleep the whole time, it’s nine or more hours of rest, rest I need. I used to expect myself to just pass out the moment I lay down — I now realize that expectation is misguided.
I’ll report back on how it feels and whether nine hours a night is really what I need. I’ll report back on whether all the hours I spent laying down with my eyes closed are actually effective.
Stay tuned!
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This post was previously published on The Partnered Pen.
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