Getting Sleep

The count down to Kona is definitely on for real now. A couple of days to go and so it will be feeling very real to competitors now. I imagine that things such as bike racking and dropping off transition bags will happen tomorrow. Given that those activities will be on the agenda for tomorrow I suspect most people will have started doing prep work today. Preparation work for an Ironman usually means packing those transition bags, putting stickers on bikes etc. Once you are doing those activities it is fairly hard to not be thinking about race day. Once that happens, the nerves really tend to kick in. 

Once the race becomes real and the nerves kick in for real, all of a sudden sleep can become hard to find. I have lost count of the number of times I have lain in bed before a race, tired, but unable to turn my brain off and go to sleep. Knowing that the longer I am awake the more tired I am getting and getting more stressed because of it, creating a vicious circle. After doing this more times than I can count I started developing a bit of a routine to help me get to bed in the night's before a race. It wasn't fool proof, but it worked fairly often.

The first thing I found to be important for getting a good nights sleep was to make sure that everything that needed to be done was been done well before I was trying to get to bed. The worst factor I found in causing disturbed sleep was rushing around trying to get bags packed, mixing nutrition and generally trying to get ready right before bed. Yesterday I wrote about reducing stress by making sure race preparation was well planned and executed so things weren't rushed. Making sure you aren't trying to finalise your preparations right before bed relates to this.

Once you know that all the eyes are dotted and tees are crossed, then you can relax and get on with heading to bed in a fairly calm state that is ready for sleep.

Once it is time for bed, the routine I followed was always fairly consistent.

Firstly I would try to head to bed at a fairly normal time, not to much earlier than I was used to, but also not to much later. Triathlons start very early, so wake up times are usually super early, so often you have to head to bed super early to be ready. The earliest start I remember was having to be up at 3:30am to get to a start line in Sydney once. I had just flown across from Perth, so for my body clock I was probably waking up at something like 1:30am, so I tried not to think about it too much. I knew that the early morning was coming though so in preparation I had been heading to bed early in the days leading up to the race. This meant that when I got to the night before the race I was able to go to bed very early without it being unusual. On the whole though with my pre-race bedtime routine I tried to keep it as consistent with my normal routine as possible. 

Secondly I would have a hot shower. I remember being in a training course once and being taught about sleep and some of the tricks you can use to help you get to sleep. Basically I used to try and implement all these tricks before races, and one of them was to have a hot shower. I gather the idea is that when you go to sleep you metabolism increases causing body heat. Apparently if you increase your body temperature it sort works backwards and tricks you body into getting ready for sleep. I am not sure if that is true or not, but I used to utilise it and I think it usually worked. 

Next I would have a drink of milk. I love milk and so having a glass of it was never really a problem, but once again this was a trick from the training course. Apparently cows milk has an enzyme in it that helps put you to sleep. This is not so good for you if you are lactose intolerant or don't like milk, but for me it was a perfect thing to add to my bed time routine. 

Next I would make sure my room was ready for sleep. I would make sure the room was at a comfortable temperature (slightly cool), dark and quiet. Once I had a homestay with a fairly amazing snorer and so after that I started always travelling with ear plugs so that I couldn't get my room silent then I could make it so. Cool, dark and quiet are the optimal sleeping conditions and so I would make sure I got my bedroom as close to that as possible

Lastly I would usually not try to go to sleep right away, but relax a bit by reading a book or something. I would usually try to choose a book that I enjoyed but wasn't too simulating. I would also try to give myself an hour or so of reading time before I 'had to' be asleep. Typically I never managed to read for an hour, normally falling asleep well before hand, but that was the idea was to let myself relax and read without worrying about bedtime. 

And that was about it. This routine took me a couple of years to finesse and it wasn't perfect, I still had races where I swear I spent more time awake than asleep the night before. But on the whole I think this bed time routine worked more times than it didn't and so I count that as a win.