Missed Opportunity

So tired today, yet another reminder about the importance of adequate sleep.

I haven't been getting enough sleep for the last two nights, no real excuses, just been a bit lazy with my nighttime routine leading to later than ideal bedtimes. Not smart.

This lack of sleep has meant that today I have dealt with the usual issues, tired, irritable, difficulty concentrating etc. More importantly for an athlete this lack of sleep has impacted my quality of training.

As I mentioned yesterday I am tapering this week for the final race of the season on the weekend. While this race isn't a big deal I would like to do as well as I can there, so ideally I should be getting in some quality training and good recovery. Getting insufficient sleep doesn't really fit that equation.

In my training session this morning I found it hard to build motivation, energy levels were low and fatigue was high. I suspect a large part of these effects were due to this lack of sleep and associated recovery. While the training session was beneficial, it wasn't right on the money, which means it was a bit of a missed opportunity. If you follow that train of thought you can extrapolate the impact of a chronic lack of sleep. Less sleep means poorer recovery, more subpar sessions, more likelihood of missed sessions, which all adds up to less adaption, improvement and progress in sport.

Don't worry I am not going to get overly dramatic and propose that a few nights of poor sleep suddenly mean that my sporting world in ending. The reasons behind poor training sessions can be quite a bit more complicated than that. However, these last couple of days have been a good reminder how impactful insufficient sleep can be long term. All to often the amount of sleep we get is something that we ignore, however, doing so is to our detriment.

Now, time for sleep.