September 30, 2022 • 25 mins
For most, it’s hard to fathom a 50-mile trek on foot across any terrain. But for YiOu Wang, a professional ultra-marathon runner, that kind of distance is all in a day’s work. It takes strategic training and relearning what it means to sleep and rest to prepare the body and mind for such exertion. Join host Anahad O’Connor to learn about the important role sleep plays in athletic training and competition. Plus, hear from neurophysiologist and brain coach to elite athletes, Louisa Nicola, as she explains how bodies in training at any level require more attention to sleep to maintain strong muscles and high performance.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
There's no sleeping.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I think that's usually the first question I get is
do you get to sleep during ultra durance running events?
And I'm like, no, not. If you're trying to finish
within the time limit, you run through the night.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Eo Wang is a competitive runner currently training to compete
this fall in the JFK fifty mile ultra Marathon. The
race route spans over one thousand feet in elevation along
a mountainous and rocky section of the Appalachian Trail. It
horseshoes along the Cno Canal Towpath before ending in historic
(00:41):
Williamsport on the border of Maryland and West Virginia. You
know the best way.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
To warm up start running.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
While the varied terrain of this course makes for an
intense and arduous race, fifty miles is not the longest
distance for an ultra marathon, nor is it the longest
raised Eo has ever competed in. But running long distances
is just part of the training program. These ultra endurance
athletes have to think about the whole picture. When you're
(01:10):
pushing your body to the max, you've got to think
about physical endurance, mental strength, nutrition, and most importantly sleep
in order for EO and runners like her to keep
going mile after mile, Sleep must be a part of
a winning plan.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It can be almost four miles to go all the
way to the top of the hill to our little
single attack book and come back.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I'm Anahad O'Connor and this is Chasing Sleep and iHeartRadio
production in partnership with Mattress Firm. As a best selling
author and a health columnist with the background in psychology,
I've spent a lot of my time studying and writing
about sleep. Sleep is so essential to our overall health,
(01:54):
but often it's something we overlook, and it's the first
thing we tend to neglect. In each episod, we'll meet
people living and working in extraordinary circumstances. I want to
learn how they rest and recharge their bodies and minds
to perform at their best, whether it's an ultra marathon
or training for their next one hundred miles, or an
astronaut floating in space. Together, we'll explore the unique challenges
(02:18):
they encounter and uncover the universal secrets to a RESTful
night of sleep, no matter the environment or occupational hazards. Today,
we'll look at the roles sleep plays and training for intents,
endurance competitions, and the symbiotic relationship between sleep and physical fitness.
Plus we'll discover which is more important an early morning
(02:39):
workout or an extra hour of sleep.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
My name is Eo Wang. I'm a professional trail and ultrarunner,
and I'm also a.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Teacher throughout the summer.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Eos darts the day with a cup of coffee and
then heads out to the trails for a run. And
she's not the only one. According to a twenty twenty
report from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, about fifty
million Americans take part in running or jogging.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
After competing in both the twenty twelve and twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Olympic Marathon trials, Eo now has her sights on becoming
one of the top ten women in a globally recognized
ultra marathon. She has already won the Lake Sonoma fifty
mile race in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen. But people
aren't born ultra marathoners, and she wasn't even always a runner.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
It took her some time to find her rhythm in
the sport.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I started running when I went to college at MIT,
and I spectated my first Boston Marathon as a freshman,
I got so inspired by what I was seeing happening
in front of me. I was not a runner at
the time. I did not think of myself as being
(04:02):
athletic in any way, so it was kind of a
personal quest and challenge to work on doing sports. And
I kind of just got hooked on the process of
trying to run a bit longer each day. And this
idea that you know, working towards a running goal means
(04:24):
you have to be consistent and train and develop fitness
over time. So I remember training for my first five k,
and then once I got the five k under my belt,
moving to longer and longer distances, eventually a half marathon
and then a full marathon. And I just kept going
back for a few years doing Boston, setting goals for
(04:47):
myself of trying to run a little.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Bit faster each year.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I ran fast enough to qualify for the trials in
twenty twelve in the marathon. I've run a lot of
fifty k, fifty milers, and one hundred milers since then.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Wait, did you just say one hundred miles.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah, there's a one hundred mile race called the Western
States hundred miler, which claims to be the oldest hundred
miler around. Some people might dispute that, but I think
officially on record, it is the oldest organized hundred miler.
It's a race that starts in Squaw and ends in Auburn, California,
(05:30):
and it just attracts a very competitive field each year
and has worked its way to being one of the
marquee ultra endurance running events.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Her average finished time for one hundred mile race is
around twenty two hours, and she's running straight through that
entire time, no sleeping, just running for twenty two hours.
Think about your day yesterday and now imagine if you
were on your feet running almost every single minute of it.
If you're wondering how it's even humanly possible to do this,
(06:02):
trust me, I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
So how exactly do you manage to keep going and
stay awake through it all?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah? So the human body is a remarkable thing. You know.
Think about the times when you've had to stay up
really late, if it's really important or really exciting, or like,
you know, you're stuck at a layover on an airport,
and you amaze yourself by how many hours you can
stay up without going to sleep. It's kind of the
same thing because you're running on like so much adrenaline
(06:32):
and like crazy stress hormones and like this fight or
flight response, and that carries you through for a remarkably
long time, for very long events. Right afterwards, there is
a point at which you tend to crash. I would
say it takes me of solid forty eight hours to
come down and like crash. And it's really day two
(06:57):
through seven after the race is when I can't move.
I'm just gonna lay in bed all day or I
want to Anyway.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
As someone who loves to dig into the science and
research of how our bodies work, EO's training plan and
her approach to sleep got me thinking what role does
sleep actually play in our physical performance and how can
we use sleep as a training tool for strength and
endurance competitions. I decided to call up neurophysiologist and brain
(07:28):
coach to elite athletes, Louisa Nicola. Not only is Louisa
an expert on sleep as it relates to athletic performance,
but she was also once a triathlete who competed at
some of the highest levels.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Hi, I'm Louisa Nicola. I'm a neurophysiologist and brain coach
to elite performers. I raised for Australia, I qualified for
Beijing and London, and I also went to med school
and I became obsessed with human brain and I realized
that during my training spoke to me about sleep. In fact,
he was really against sleep. He basically said, you should
(08:06):
be training and you sleep when you're dead. And I
think a lot of people were thinking that. And this
was going back, you know, before twenty twelve, which is
when I retired from triathlon, and I always felt as
though there had to be more to human performance. There
had to be more to performance on the field and
athletic performance than just training, training the body and training
(08:29):
the tactics and technical side. There had to be more,
and that's when I became obsessed with understanding human physiology.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
She founded her company Neuroathletics in twenty sixteen and dedicated
herself to combining the science of neurology with athletic performance.
Luisa knows all about the importance of sleep for elite
athletes like EO, and explains that sleep will shift and
change depending on where someone is in her training. According
to her, there will be training periods whereas much as
(08:58):
twelve hours of sleep is completely normal.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
So sleep should change throughout your training schedule. So when
we look at periodization, Okay, you've got a block of
where you're just doing a lot of build work, which
is you're just building on endurance and you're doing a
lot and a lot of long distance and hard hard work.
This means that the body, both the body and the brain,
(09:25):
needs a lot more time to recuperate and regenerate, so sleeping.
If I knew this back then, we'd need to adjust
our sleep schedules to be sleeping if we can a
bit longer, okay, Whereas if we are doing short bouts
of intense work, our sleep may not have to be
as long. If you think of Roger Federer or Lebron James,
(09:48):
they are both renowned for sleeping twelve hours a night,
But when you couple this with the amount of training
that they do, it makes sense that they're sleeping because
they're working out anywhere from four to five hours a day,
so it makes sense. However, they don't sleep twelve hours
a night during their competition phases because they're not training,
(10:09):
they're just competing. So Basically, the general rule is the
more activity exerted during the day, the longer and better
quality the sleep needs to be.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
So if a professional basketball player is sleeping twelve hours
a night, training for four to five hours a day,
and that's their full time job, what does training and
recovery look like for EO who's competing to run fifty
plus miles and working as an elementary school teacher during
the day.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I think most of my running is constrained by work hours. Currently,
my ideal schedule would be sleeping till like seven and
then wake up, have coffee, roll out for run around
eight thirty and nine, be done around brunch time, have
an afternoon nap, maybe do an evening walk for like
(11:02):
active recovery or a double session. That's the dream of
like the absolute pro runner lifestyle. But during the school year,
I have to be at school at eight am, which
makes morning runs challenging, and that means I have to
get up at five am and get out running by
six am, be done by seven seven thirty, and then
(11:25):
get to school. I just become completely wiped out by
like ten am, and you're like, there's still four more
hours of school. So these days I tend to be
a little bit gentler on myself as far as when
I fit the run in. I know always that like
(11:46):
if I try to get up in the morning and
do it, I might be able to run a little
bit faster or get a bit more quality run in
the morning, but that means I am sacrificing my sleep,
because no matter how hard you try, it's really hard
to go to bed at nine, so you can get
up at five. I think what's key to preparing for
(12:08):
an ultra is this idea of training specific systems, kind
of a time on feet approach, where you go into
some of your long runs already tired from the week
of training that you did. I like to have at
least a couple weekends where I am running at least
three hours Saturday and Sunday back to back, and one
(12:30):
of those might actually have faster efforts, harder efforts in there,
so that you get used to running hard when you're tired.
And it's kind of about fatigue management because there's a
lot of things that you can get away with when
you're running and racing for two and a half to
three hours versus like four to seven hours.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
So EO very strategically spends about two to three hours
a day training and working to mimic the fatigue she experience.
Isn't a race, and we know some of her races
keep her awake for at least twenty four hours, but
what does she think about sleep during training periods?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It's essential in order to not get injured and not
burn out. Sleep is a great indicator of your overall
well being and also usually one of the first signs
of overtraining is a noticeable decline in sleep quality and quantity.
(13:31):
So you fall into this vicious cycle where you are fatigued,
but your body is so hyped up on the stress
hormones that you can't actually get enough sleep. And so
one of the early signs that we need to be
careful of is like, if we notice that we're consistently
(13:51):
sleeping poorly, it's definitely a sign that we're on the
road to getting overtrained, which is this chronic state of
lack of recovery for your body when you are pushing
your body through the hardest weeks of training. A lot
(14:12):
of times we as athletes want to know what's the
secret to performance, and a lot of times the answer
is just get more rest and get more recovery, Like
ninety percent of your gains can be made if you
just sleep more.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
We know that sleep plays a major role in keeping
our bodies healthy and free of injuries during intense training
and competition, but can it help us run faster or further?
Speaker 4 (14:42):
As a ne're a physiologist, we had to go in
and do a lot of sleep studies. So we'd go
into a lab and we'd assess apation maybe if they're
having any type of sleep disturbances. So it gives you
a real life picture of what sleep is, and it's
very much comprised of more than just putting your head
on appeal and waking up eight hours later if you're lucky.
It's very intricate and it houses a lot of physiology.
(15:08):
So we have four stages of sleep, and each stage
is very important. We've really got two main stages, which
is rem sleep and non rem sleep. But when we
have a look into these two stages, okay, when we
look at this non rem sleep stage, we have light
sleep and deep sleep, and this deep sleep stage it's
really stages three and four, so it happens towards the
(15:30):
end of the night.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
This deep sleep stage.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Is really responsible for the secretion of a lot of
hormones such as our growth hormone, and this is responsible
for regeneration of muscle tissue. Muscle protein synthesis happens during
the stage, so we get a more well rounded recovery.
We see a lot of players during the NBA playoffs,
for example, not being able to recover and a lot
(15:56):
of them getting sick because they have been deprived of sleep.
When it comes to ball sports such as the NBA,
we see that shooting accuracy isn't as high if you've
deprived a player of sleep, even at a mere two hours.
So if they've slept six hours compared to eight hours,
their shooting accuracy is down by at least thirty percent,
(16:20):
and that is huge because every single point matters. So
if you're taking a marathon runner, for example, and you've
deprived them of sleep, they're going to be more prone
to injury, they're going to be more fatigued, and in fact,
their rate of perceived exertion is not going to be
as high. There's one wonderful study that was done actually
on sleep deprivation and endurance athletes show that the first
(16:42):
thing that happens is their ability to keep pushing is dampened.
So if they can usually run ten miles, let's just
say at ease, if they've deprived themselves of sleep, they're
probably going to get to maybe the six or seven miles,
and their mind is going to start playing games and
start saying, oh my god, I'm tired, I'm fatigued, I
don't want to go that far. You don't have to
(17:03):
go that far, just stop, just go a bit slower.
And it's those mind games. And so that's incredibly important too.
And I realized that, Wow, if I only optimized my
sleep back when I was an elite athlete, or back
when I was training over thirty hours a week, and
if I had understood this, understood the science behind sleep,
(17:25):
then I probably would have been a better athlete. I
probably my last race, I came thirteenth, and I think
that if I knew what I knew back then like
what I know today, then maybe I would have come
on a podium, finished top three.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
We'll be right back after a brief message from our
partners at Mattress Firm.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
And now back to chasing sleep.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Now. I'm certainly no elite runner in some five k's
and one or two ten K's two, and I generally
try to keep up an exercise routine. But learning about
all of the science that goes into sleep for training
athletes has me thinking a lot about my own workouts
and sleep habits. Sleep matters to our performance physically in
a race or at the gym. It's undeniable, But is
(18:20):
that the end of the relationship between sleep and athletic prowess?
In addition to all of this, is it possible that
I'm also sleeping better because I'm keeping up a regular
exercise routine too.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
We've all got this one thing humans in common. It's
called our human nervous system. Okay, It's comprised of the
central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. And what
happens is we want to be in both the sympathetic
nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. And training and
exercising and physical activity is going to be good for
(18:51):
kudiovascular health, and it's going to be good for overall
sleep quality. If we're not training, it's definitely not going
to be good for the amount of hours that we
sleep at night. And there's also something called sleep pressure
that builds up during the day. And this happens with me.
I find that if I haven't exerted the amount of energy,
or I haven't gone out and gotten sunlight, I find
(19:13):
it hard to fall asleep that night. I'm tossing, I'm turning.
It's like I haven't gotten rid of a lot of
the energy that I've got accumulated. So physical activity during
the day of any type is very beneficial for sleep quality.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Louisa says, we should also think about the time of
day you're working out so that we can make the
most of our sleep.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And avoid interrupting our hormonal rhythms.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
The best time for training is the furthest away from
sleep as you can get. So when we are training,
when we wake up, we've got this surge of cortisol, okay,
and you really want to go out and you want
to do things. And that's honestly the best time to train.
Whether you're eating beforehand on alftand I'm not talking about that,
but the best time to train is at least six
(19:57):
hours away from sleep, because what happens if you do
train close to sleep, you're going to have this increasing
quartersol and as free quartersol just roaming through your body.
This happens for the next two hours after exercise as well,
and cortisole doesn't help you sleep. It competes with the
sleepiness hormones. So this is going to prevent you from
kind of relaxing and settling your mind down and settling
(20:19):
your body down to get into sleep. So the best
time to train for sleep quality would be in the
morning or mid morning.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And if you find yourself wavering between an extra hour
or so of sleep or getting up to hit the
trail or the gym some mornings, Luisa says, our heart
rate variability or HRV can be an important guide in
determining what our bodies need and what they're ready to
handle at any moment.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Should you sacrifice sleep and train or should you sacrifice
training and sleep? And a really good predictor of this
is heart rate variability. Almost everybody now who is training
has access to a wearable and wearable data, and if
you look on this wearable data, it comes up with
this measurement every day and it's called a heart rate variability. Oftentimes,
we can wake up every morning and we can feel
(21:09):
a bit lethargic, okay, and we may not feel good,
and you look at your HRV and maybe it's if
it's usually at let's just say for argument's sake, you
peak at one hundred every day, but you woke up
today and it was fifty. That would mean that your
body isn't well rested and your recovery index isn't that high. Therefore,
(21:31):
the best thing for you to do in terms of
long term athletic performance and in terms of overall health,
the best thing for you to do that day would
be to go really easy and capitalize on sleep. Whereas
if you wake up and your HRV let's just say
it's at one hundred, or maybe it's at one hundred
and ten, and usually your baseline is one hundred, then
you have room to go through and do a bit
(21:54):
of extra hard work that day. And HRV is a
really great predictor of overall performance recovery. So that's how
I would judge them. So, if you're going out and
you really want to learn about your body, you really
want to learn about your own metrics and your own data,
the best thing to do would be to have a
look at your HLB and you know, predict it that way.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I think before the race it's important to not obsess
about the night before, because it's really about your two
to three nights before the night before. Because you know
we talked earlier about your body can go for twenty
four hours straight with no problem. So think about it
as like, say your race is Saturday, your Thursday night
(22:39):
sleep is going to get you through even if you
can't sleep Friday night. And a lot of people, myself included,
tend to not be able to sleep that well the
night before because you're often doing your last minute preparation.
You're nervous, you're thinking about the morning, and the more
you think about sleep, the less you're able to sleep.
(23:00):
You often have to get up early to you know,
get to the race and do all your pre race
stuff anyway, so it's really the two to three days
before the night before the race that are key.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Eo has spent the last several years fine tuning the
way she runs and sleeps to maximize what her body
and mind can accomplish on race day, whether it's a
cup of coffee in the morning or a sleep.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Cash that night. Eo says that consistency is key.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
For any level of running or fitness routine, even if
you're just getting started.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I think my best piece of advice would just be
to be consistent and establish a routine. It's not about
doing as much as you can all at once right
at the start, because you will, you know, burn out.
I think it's about doing something every day and sticking
(23:57):
to that routine and also making sure that you don't
sacrifice things like recovery, nutrition, and sleep. There are a
lot of people who start a fitness journey and they're like, Oh,
I'm going to go to the gym every day at
five am in the morning before work. Like, that's great
(24:18):
if you're also able to get enough sleep to like
support that kind of schedule. If it's going to be
detrimental to you getting your sleep and you're going to
be drinking ten cups of coffee every day, like maybe
kind of rethink where that can fit in your day,
or maybe it slides in later in the day, maybe
(24:39):
it slides in the middle of the day. Sleep is
really important.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That's all for this episode.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Don't forget to join me again next week, when we
learn about how a journalist chases and finds healthy sleep
through breaking news and the type deadlines at the twenty
four hour news cycle.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Now you're trying to unplug from showtime mode, and you're
trying to tell your body worktime is over and now
it's time to relax and unwind and go to sleep,
and your body's still in go mode.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
We want to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Leave a rating or review for our show on your
podcast player of choice.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
You can find me on Twitter at Anahad O'Connor.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Until next time, Hoping you're living your best while sleeping
your best.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Chasing Sleep is.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
A production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our
executive producer is Molly Sosha, our EP of post is
Matt Stillo, our producer is Sierra Kaiser, and this show
is hosted by Annahad O'Connor
There's no sleeping.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I think that's usually the first question I get is
do you get to sleep during ultra durance running events?
And I'm like, no, not. If you're trying to finish
within the time limit, you run through the night.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Eo Wang is a competitive runner currently training to compete
this fall in the JFK fifty mile ultra Marathon. The
race route spans over one thousand feet in elevation along
a mountainous and rocky section of the Appalachian Trail. It
horseshoes along the Cno Canal Towpath before ending in historic
(00:41):
Williamsport on the border of Maryland and West Virginia. You
know the best way.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
To warm up start running.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
While the varied terrain of this course makes for an
intense and arduous race, fifty miles is not the longest
distance for an ultra marathon, nor is it the longest
raised Eo has ever competed in. But running long distances
is just part of the training program. These ultra endurance
athletes have to think about the whole picture. When you're
(01:10):
pushing your body to the max, you've got to think
about physical endurance, mental strength, nutrition, and most importantly sleep
in order for EO and runners like her to keep
going mile after mile, Sleep must be a part of
a winning plan.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It can be almost four miles to go all the
way to the top of the hill to our little
single attack book and come back.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I'm Anahad O'Connor and this is Chasing Sleep and iHeartRadio
production in partnership with Mattress Firm. As a best selling
author and a health columnist with the background in psychology,
I've spent a lot of my time studying and writing
about sleep. Sleep is so essential to our overall health,
(01:54):
but often it's something we overlook, and it's the first
thing we tend to neglect. In each episod, we'll meet
people living and working in extraordinary circumstances. I want to
learn how they rest and recharge their bodies and minds
to perform at their best, whether it's an ultra marathon
or training for their next one hundred miles, or an
astronaut floating in space. Together, we'll explore the unique challenges
(02:18):
they encounter and uncover the universal secrets to a RESTful
night of sleep, no matter the environment or occupational hazards. Today,
we'll look at the roles sleep plays and training for intents,
endurance competitions, and the symbiotic relationship between sleep and physical fitness.
Plus we'll discover which is more important an early morning
(02:39):
workout or an extra hour of sleep.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
My name is Eo Wang. I'm a professional trail and ultrarunner,
and I'm also a.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Teacher throughout the summer.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Eos darts the day with a cup of coffee and
then heads out to the trails for a run. And
she's not the only one. According to a twenty twenty
report from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, about fifty
million Americans take part in running or jogging.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
After competing in both the twenty twelve and twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Olympic Marathon trials, Eo now has her sights on becoming
one of the top ten women in a globally recognized
ultra marathon. She has already won the Lake Sonoma fifty
mile race in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen. But people
aren't born ultra marathoners, and she wasn't even always a runner.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
It took her some time to find her rhythm in
the sport.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I started running when I went to college at MIT,
and I spectated my first Boston Marathon as a freshman,
I got so inspired by what I was seeing happening
in front of me. I was not a runner at
the time. I did not think of myself as being
(04:02):
athletic in any way, so it was kind of a
personal quest and challenge to work on doing sports. And
I kind of just got hooked on the process of
trying to run a bit longer each day. And this
idea that you know, working towards a running goal means
(04:24):
you have to be consistent and train and develop fitness
over time. So I remember training for my first five k,
and then once I got the five k under my belt,
moving to longer and longer distances, eventually a half marathon
and then a full marathon. And I just kept going
back for a few years doing Boston, setting goals for
(04:47):
myself of trying to run a little.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Bit faster each year.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I ran fast enough to qualify for the trials in
twenty twelve in the marathon. I've run a lot of
fifty k, fifty milers, and one hundred milers since then.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Wait, did you just say one hundred miles.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah, there's a one hundred mile race called the Western
States hundred miler, which claims to be the oldest hundred
miler around. Some people might dispute that, but I think
officially on record, it is the oldest organized hundred miler.
It's a race that starts in Squaw and ends in Auburn, California,
(05:30):
and it just attracts a very competitive field each year
and has worked its way to being one of the
marquee ultra endurance running events.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Her average finished time for one hundred mile race is
around twenty two hours, and she's running straight through that
entire time, no sleeping, just running for twenty two hours.
Think about your day yesterday and now imagine if you
were on your feet running almost every single minute of it.
If you're wondering how it's even humanly possible to do this,
(06:02):
trust me, I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
So how exactly do you manage to keep going and
stay awake through it all?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah? So the human body is a remarkable thing. You know.
Think about the times when you've had to stay up
really late, if it's really important or really exciting, or like,
you know, you're stuck at a layover on an airport,
and you amaze yourself by how many hours you can
stay up without going to sleep. It's kind of the
same thing because you're running on like so much adrenaline
(06:32):
and like crazy stress hormones and like this fight or
flight response, and that carries you through for a remarkably
long time, for very long events. Right afterwards, there is
a point at which you tend to crash. I would
say it takes me of solid forty eight hours to
come down and like crash. And it's really day two
(06:57):
through seven after the race is when I can't move.
I'm just gonna lay in bed all day or I
want to Anyway.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
As someone who loves to dig into the science and
research of how our bodies work, EO's training plan and
her approach to sleep got me thinking what role does
sleep actually play in our physical performance and how can
we use sleep as a training tool for strength and
endurance competitions. I decided to call up neurophysiologist and brain
(07:28):
coach to elite athletes, Louisa Nicola. Not only is Louisa
an expert on sleep as it relates to athletic performance,
but she was also once a triathlete who competed at
some of the highest levels.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Hi, I'm Louisa Nicola. I'm a neurophysiologist and brain coach
to elite performers. I raised for Australia, I qualified for
Beijing and London, and I also went to med school
and I became obsessed with human brain and I realized
that during my training spoke to me about sleep. In fact,
he was really against sleep. He basically said, you should
(08:06):
be training and you sleep when you're dead. And I
think a lot of people were thinking that. And this
was going back, you know, before twenty twelve, which is
when I retired from triathlon, and I always felt as
though there had to be more to human performance. There
had to be more to performance on the field and
athletic performance than just training, training the body and training
(08:29):
the tactics and technical side. There had to be more,
and that's when I became obsessed with understanding human physiology.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
She founded her company Neuroathletics in twenty sixteen and dedicated
herself to combining the science of neurology with athletic performance.
Luisa knows all about the importance of sleep for elite
athletes like EO, and explains that sleep will shift and
change depending on where someone is in her training. According
to her, there will be training periods whereas much as
(08:58):
twelve hours of sleep is completely normal.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
So sleep should change throughout your training schedule. So when
we look at periodization, Okay, you've got a block of
where you're just doing a lot of build work, which
is you're just building on endurance and you're doing a
lot and a lot of long distance and hard hard work.
This means that the body, both the body and the brain,
(09:25):
needs a lot more time to recuperate and regenerate, so sleeping.
If I knew this back then, we'd need to adjust
our sleep schedules to be sleeping if we can a
bit longer, okay, Whereas if we are doing short bouts
of intense work, our sleep may not have to be
as long. If you think of Roger Federer or Lebron James,
(09:48):
they are both renowned for sleeping twelve hours a night,
But when you couple this with the amount of training
that they do, it makes sense that they're sleeping because
they're working out anywhere from four to five hours a day,
so it makes sense. However, they don't sleep twelve hours
a night during their competition phases because they're not training,
(10:09):
they're just competing. So Basically, the general rule is the
more activity exerted during the day, the longer and better
quality the sleep needs to be.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
So if a professional basketball player is sleeping twelve hours
a night, training for four to five hours a day,
and that's their full time job, what does training and
recovery look like for EO who's competing to run fifty
plus miles and working as an elementary school teacher during
the day.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I think most of my running is constrained by work hours. Currently,
my ideal schedule would be sleeping till like seven and
then wake up, have coffee, roll out for run around
eight thirty and nine, be done around brunch time, have
an afternoon nap, maybe do an evening walk for like
(11:02):
active recovery or a double session. That's the dream of
like the absolute pro runner lifestyle. But during the school year,
I have to be at school at eight am, which
makes morning runs challenging, and that means I have to
get up at five am and get out running by
six am, be done by seven seven thirty, and then
(11:25):
get to school. I just become completely wiped out by
like ten am, and you're like, there's still four more
hours of school. So these days I tend to be
a little bit gentler on myself as far as when
I fit the run in. I know always that like
(11:46):
if I try to get up in the morning and
do it, I might be able to run a little
bit faster or get a bit more quality run in
the morning, but that means I am sacrificing my sleep,
because no matter how hard you try, it's really hard
to go to bed at nine, so you can get
up at five. I think what's key to preparing for
(12:08):
an ultra is this idea of training specific systems, kind
of a time on feet approach, where you go into
some of your long runs already tired from the week
of training that you did. I like to have at
least a couple weekends where I am running at least
three hours Saturday and Sunday back to back, and one
(12:30):
of those might actually have faster efforts, harder efforts in there,
so that you get used to running hard when you're tired.
And it's kind of about fatigue management because there's a
lot of things that you can get away with when
you're running and racing for two and a half to
three hours versus like four to seven hours.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
So EO very strategically spends about two to three hours
a day training and working to mimic the fatigue she experience.
Isn't a race, and we know some of her races
keep her awake for at least twenty four hours, but
what does she think about sleep during training periods?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It's essential in order to not get injured and not
burn out. Sleep is a great indicator of your overall
well being and also usually one of the first signs
of overtraining is a noticeable decline in sleep quality and quantity.
(13:31):
So you fall into this vicious cycle where you are fatigued,
but your body is so hyped up on the stress
hormones that you can't actually get enough sleep. And so
one of the early signs that we need to be
careful of is like, if we notice that we're consistently
(13:51):
sleeping poorly, it's definitely a sign that we're on the
road to getting overtrained, which is this chronic state of
lack of recovery for your body when you are pushing
your body through the hardest weeks of training. A lot
(14:12):
of times we as athletes want to know what's the
secret to performance, and a lot of times the answer
is just get more rest and get more recovery, Like
ninety percent of your gains can be made if you
just sleep more.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
We know that sleep plays a major role in keeping
our bodies healthy and free of injuries during intense training
and competition, but can it help us run faster or further?
Speaker 4 (14:42):
As a ne're a physiologist, we had to go in
and do a lot of sleep studies. So we'd go
into a lab and we'd assess apation maybe if they're
having any type of sleep disturbances. So it gives you
a real life picture of what sleep is, and it's
very much comprised of more than just putting your head
on appeal and waking up eight hours later if you're lucky.
It's very intricate and it houses a lot of physiology.
(15:08):
So we have four stages of sleep, and each stage
is very important. We've really got two main stages, which
is rem sleep and non rem sleep. But when we
have a look into these two stages, okay, when we
look at this non rem sleep stage, we have light
sleep and deep sleep, and this deep sleep stage it's
really stages three and four, so it happens towards the
(15:30):
end of the night.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
This deep sleep stage.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Is really responsible for the secretion of a lot of
hormones such as our growth hormone, and this is responsible
for regeneration of muscle tissue. Muscle protein synthesis happens during
the stage, so we get a more well rounded recovery.
We see a lot of players during the NBA playoffs,
for example, not being able to recover and a lot
(15:56):
of them getting sick because they have been deprived of sleep.
When it comes to ball sports such as the NBA,
we see that shooting accuracy isn't as high if you've
deprived a player of sleep, even at a mere two hours.
So if they've slept six hours compared to eight hours,
their shooting accuracy is down by at least thirty percent,
(16:20):
and that is huge because every single point matters. So
if you're taking a marathon runner, for example, and you've
deprived them of sleep, they're going to be more prone
to injury, they're going to be more fatigued, and in fact,
their rate of perceived exertion is not going to be
as high. There's one wonderful study that was done actually
on sleep deprivation and endurance athletes show that the first
(16:42):
thing that happens is their ability to keep pushing is dampened.
So if they can usually run ten miles, let's just
say at ease, if they've deprived themselves of sleep, they're
probably going to get to maybe the six or seven miles,
and their mind is going to start playing games and
start saying, oh my god, I'm tired, I'm fatigued, I
don't want to go that far. You don't have to
(17:03):
go that far, just stop, just go a bit slower.
And it's those mind games. And so that's incredibly important too.
And I realized that, Wow, if I only optimized my
sleep back when I was an elite athlete, or back
when I was training over thirty hours a week, and
if I had understood this, understood the science behind sleep,
(17:25):
then I probably would have been a better athlete. I
probably my last race, I came thirteenth, and I think
that if I knew what I knew back then like
what I know today, then maybe I would have come
on a podium, finished top three.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
We'll be right back after a brief message from our
partners at Mattress Firm.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
And now back to chasing sleep.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Now. I'm certainly no elite runner in some five k's
and one or two ten K's two, and I generally
try to keep up an exercise routine. But learning about
all of the science that goes into sleep for training
athletes has me thinking a lot about my own workouts
and sleep habits. Sleep matters to our performance physically in
a race or at the gym. It's undeniable, But is
(18:20):
that the end of the relationship between sleep and athletic prowess?
In addition to all of this, is it possible that
I'm also sleeping better because I'm keeping up a regular
exercise routine too.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
We've all got this one thing humans in common. It's
called our human nervous system. Okay, It's comprised of the
central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. And what
happens is we want to be in both the sympathetic
nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. And training and
exercising and physical activity is going to be good for
(18:51):
kudiovascular health, and it's going to be good for overall
sleep quality. If we're not training, it's definitely not going
to be good for the amount of hours that we
sleep at night. And there's also something called sleep pressure
that builds up during the day. And this happens with me.
I find that if I haven't exerted the amount of energy,
or I haven't gone out and gotten sunlight, I find
(19:13):
it hard to fall asleep that night. I'm tossing, I'm turning.
It's like I haven't gotten rid of a lot of
the energy that I've got accumulated. So physical activity during
the day of any type is very beneficial for sleep quality.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Louisa says, we should also think about the time of
day you're working out so that we can make the
most of our sleep.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And avoid interrupting our hormonal rhythms.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
The best time for training is the furthest away from
sleep as you can get. So when we are training,
when we wake up, we've got this surge of cortisol, okay,
and you really want to go out and you want
to do things. And that's honestly the best time to train.
Whether you're eating beforehand on alftand I'm not talking about that,
but the best time to train is at least six
(19:57):
hours away from sleep, because what happens if you do
train close to sleep, you're going to have this increasing
quartersol and as free quartersol just roaming through your body.
This happens for the next two hours after exercise as well,
and cortisole doesn't help you sleep. It competes with the
sleepiness hormones. So this is going to prevent you from
kind of relaxing and settling your mind down and settling
(20:19):
your body down to get into sleep. So the best
time to train for sleep quality would be in the
morning or mid morning.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And if you find yourself wavering between an extra hour
or so of sleep or getting up to hit the
trail or the gym some mornings, Luisa says, our heart
rate variability or HRV can be an important guide in
determining what our bodies need and what they're ready to
handle at any moment.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Should you sacrifice sleep and train or should you sacrifice
training and sleep? And a really good predictor of this
is heart rate variability. Almost everybody now who is training
has access to a wearable and wearable data, and if
you look on this wearable data, it comes up with
this measurement every day and it's called a heart rate variability. Oftentimes,
we can wake up every morning and we can feel
(21:09):
a bit lethargic, okay, and we may not feel good,
and you look at your HRV and maybe it's if
it's usually at let's just say for argument's sake, you
peak at one hundred every day, but you woke up
today and it was fifty. That would mean that your
body isn't well rested and your recovery index isn't that high. Therefore,
(21:31):
the best thing for you to do in terms of
long term athletic performance and in terms of overall health,
the best thing for you to do that day would
be to go really easy and capitalize on sleep. Whereas
if you wake up and your HRV let's just say
it's at one hundred, or maybe it's at one hundred
and ten, and usually your baseline is one hundred, then
you have room to go through and do a bit
(21:54):
of extra hard work that day. And HRV is a
really great predictor of overall performance recovery. So that's how
I would judge them. So, if you're going out and
you really want to learn about your body, you really
want to learn about your own metrics and your own data,
the best thing to do would be to have a
look at your HLB and you know, predict it that way.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I think before the race it's important to not obsess
about the night before, because it's really about your two
to three nights before the night before. Because you know
we talked earlier about your body can go for twenty
four hours straight with no problem. So think about it
as like, say your race is Saturday, your Thursday night
(22:39):
sleep is going to get you through even if you
can't sleep Friday night. And a lot of people, myself included,
tend to not be able to sleep that well the
night before because you're often doing your last minute preparation.
You're nervous, you're thinking about the morning, and the more
you think about sleep, the less you're able to sleep.
(23:00):
You often have to get up early to you know,
get to the race and do all your pre race
stuff anyway, so it's really the two to three days
before the night before the race that are key.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Eo has spent the last several years fine tuning the
way she runs and sleeps to maximize what her body
and mind can accomplish on race day, whether it's a
cup of coffee in the morning or a sleep.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Cash that night. Eo says that consistency is key.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
For any level of running or fitness routine, even if
you're just getting started.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I think my best piece of advice would just be
to be consistent and establish a routine. It's not about
doing as much as you can all at once right
at the start, because you will, you know, burn out.
I think it's about doing something every day and sticking
(23:57):
to that routine and also making sure that you don't
sacrifice things like recovery, nutrition, and sleep. There are a
lot of people who start a fitness journey and they're like, Oh,
I'm going to go to the gym every day at
five am in the morning before work. Like, that's great
(24:18):
if you're also able to get enough sleep to like
support that kind of schedule. If it's going to be
detrimental to you getting your sleep and you're going to
be drinking ten cups of coffee every day, like maybe
kind of rethink where that can fit in your day,
or maybe it slides in later in the day, maybe
(24:39):
it slides in the middle of the day. Sleep is
really important.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That's all for this episode.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Don't forget to join me again next week, when we
learn about how a journalist chases and finds healthy sleep
through breaking news and the type deadlines at the twenty
four hour news cycle.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Now you're trying to unplug from showtime mode, and you're
trying to tell your body worktime is over and now
it's time to relax and unwind and go to sleep,
and your body's still in go mode.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
We want to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Leave a rating or review for our show on your
podcast player of choice.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
You can find me on Twitter at Anahad O'Connor.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Until next time, Hoping you're living your best while sleeping
your best.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Chasing Sleep is.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
A production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our
executive producer is Molly Sosha, our EP of post is
Matt Stillo, our producer is Sierra Kaiser, and this show
is hosted by Annahad O'Connor
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