We often hear stories about athletes who are in bed by 8 and sleep for 12 hours per night, but I'm wondering is this really true or an exaggeration? If I went to bed at 8 I'd be wide awake by 3 and unable to get back to sleep. Are they actually getting that amount of sleep on a consistent basis? Is it possible that their ability to sleep for so long is a large reason why many elites are so much better than the rest of us?
Put in some serious mileage while doing 2-3 quality workouts a week + cross training, strength training, core training and stretching. Yeah, you'll spend anytime not training sleeping or at the very least laying down.
It's honestly so variable how much elite runners sleep. I know a 13 teens 5k guy who sleeps 7-8 hours a night, and a 61 half guy who sleeps 8-9 hours a night, but I don't really know of any truly elite guys sleeping 10+ hours a night. Granted those two examples also sneak in naps when they can. If I had to venture a guess, elite runners past early college don't sleep nearly as much as people say they do. From my experience, the more I'm running, with high intensity work, I actually have a harder time sleeping because of all of the aches and pains from super high intensity training. I've heard this from other guys too.
if you don't work you can nap most days of the week and get in 9+ hrs cumulative per day.
when I was laid off for a bit due to covid I was getting about 8.5hrs at night and napping an hour or two a few days per week. was cycling about 6 hrs per week and running 6 or 7 hrs per week at the time.
Yuta Shitara claims to only sleep like ~5 1/2 hours per night (at least if google translate is correct):
People often either exaggerate or underreport things like sleep and calories. I bet most super elites sleep about 7-8h a night and nap 0.5-2h during the day. If any of them report sleeping 6h or less, they're either extreme outliers or don't report naps because reasons.
Humans can also be very random. Okay, someone might sleep 5h most nights but then crash and sleep 9-12h on every 4th night, but they won't tell you about that 4th night. Because reasons.
Insomniac Runner wrote:
We often hear stories about athletes who are in bed by 8 and sleep for 12 hours per night, but I'm wondering is this really true or an exaggeration? If I went to bed at 8 I'd be wide awake by 3 and unable to get back to sleep. Are they actually getting that amount of sleep on a consistent basis? Is it possible that their ability to sleep for so long is a large reason why many elites are so much better than the rest of us?
Al Sal said he sleeps poorly and he did fine.
I think elites also take some naps, so it's hard to know if they mean 10 hours per night, or 8-9 per night plus a solid nap mid day.
I remember Ryan Hall saying he slept 10 hours a per night, and also that he napped. He would wake up on easy days and have no coffee and go jog. When you alternate coffee days and no-coffee days, doing 100-140 mpw with quality work, yeah I bet it's really easy to just pass out on the couch after an 80 minute easy run.
Really? Wow, I'm jealous of you guys who can just pass out after a run! I've been averaging 80MPW including 2 hard sessions and a long run for the entire duration of the pandemic and I still lay there tossing and turning for hours. You guys don't know how lucky you are to be able to sleep so easily.
You gotta get yourself a sleep cocktail. Crush up 10mg of melatonin into a glass of red wine and sleep like a champ