You are following your training program, taking rest days, and keeping your easy runs easy, but ARE YOU GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP? 

Why is sleep so important?

Not getting enough sleep is associated with:

• Faster "Time to Exhaustion" during activity
• Increased Perceived Effort during activity
• Increased risk of Overtraining Syndrome
• Impaired glucose metabolism and appetite regulation
• Increased irritability, anxiety, and depression
• Elevated Cortisol and depressed testosterone
• Chronic inflammation
• Increased incidence of injuries

How Much Sleep Do I Need?

The general recommendation is to get between 7-9 hours of sleep per night. Your individual needs may vary and will also shift depending on your training load. The more you are training, the more sleep is needed.

You are probably thinking, "That sounds great, but there is NO WAY I can get that much sleep and get done all I need to get done!"

Here are some tips:

• Get as much sleep as you can, whether through going to bed earlier or squeezing in a mid-day nap. 
• Try to make the sleep you do get as high quality as possible.
• Evaluate your current training. You want to stay active and consistent, but if you don't have the ability to properly recover right now, it might not be the best time to focus on harder or more intense training cycles.
• Ask yourself if cutting into your sleep to run a few extra miles is helping or hurting you.

Remember: consistently under-sleeping to fit in your training is not a sustainable path. It has more negative effects than positive ones.

How many hours of sleep are you getting?