Sleeping in an event

Sleeping

This article is not written for the top 1%, but the 99%.

Sleeping, or not, when racing an ultra endurance event is fascinating and scary. It’s scary how glorified and admired the ability to forgo sleep is. Yes, not sleeping can be a competitive advantage, but I don’t think it should be encouraged for the masses, or even the elite. But I am biased, I find not sleeping almost impossible physically and mentally, and frankly I don’t find it fun. I do this for fun, I know some call ultra-endurance events type 2, but if I didn’t enjoy it in the act, I’d do something else.

To sleep I took a tent to Silk Road Mountain Race in 2019 and 2021

So, should you sleep? In short Yes and more than you think too.

Sleep is a vital part of human life for the body and mind to function. Without sleep for 11 days you will die, it’ll take longer than without water (3 days) but quicker than without food (40 days). Perhaps putting it in context makes it seem more real and scary.

The amount of sleep you will need will depend upon the event duration and your personal requirement. When new to the sport, I would always advise you to err on the side of too much sleep to begin. Afterall, the aim is to finish, and with too much sleep you will be more likely to finish than too little. Plus you will have more fun – which is ultimately why you’re there. All too often I see people trying to ride straight though the night, or committing to these mad sleep schedules before they even start. One night you might need more sleep, say five hours, than the next. One night you might be in a hotel and comfy bed and perhaps it’s worth sleeping more. Another you might be bivying and it’s raining so it’s not worth it. The key is to be consistent however, far better to sleep five hours a night than five one night and nothing the next.

But sleeping is wasting time, I should be cycling!

I hear you, I used to think the same. Ultimately it is a balance. If you’re sleeping eight hours a night during an event, perhaps that’s too much. But trying to sleep an average of twenty minutes a night in a seven day event, well you’re in for a tough time.

Enjoy a nice bivy spot

In my limited experience I have found this:

Events less then four days; I can get away with around 1h30 minimum a night. I might be able to cut down on the last night.

Events longer than four days; I need around 3h a night average.

This figures I give above are to demonstrate my limit, that I have found after years of self-experimenting, the painful way. Note this is not your limit. I really don’t enjoy pushing the limit on sleep, who knows what the long term effects are on my brain. When I was blessed enough to win The Transcontinental it was on around three hours a night average over the race. There are people faster than I that sleep even more, Geoffroy Dussault comes to mind. So you do not have to forgo sleep to be fast.

When riding technical events like the Highland Trial 550 I feel sleep becomes even more important. Though on reflection perhaps it’s just as, if not more important for on-road events also. In 2021 I slept on average around 3 hours a night, though this was inflated by a long stop on night three. If we consider Atlas Mountain Race in 2020 which was more representative of ideal sleep:

Night one: 1h

Night two: 1h30

Night three: 1h30

Night four: 20min

This amount of sleep was on the absolute limit of what I can sustain while operating at a good level. If I had tried to sleep less I would have made mistake (costing time) and been unhappy.

It’s worth thinking about what happens when you sleep less. In the first Transcontinental race  I did in 2015 (time flies) I was an idiot and thought sleeping in twenty minute windows like the legend Christof Strasser would be a good idea. Anyway, it all fell apart horribly for me in the end. However one mistake as a result of being so deprived I made was in Ljubljana, I wanted to get some food but the fast food place was closed, so I ended up cycling around for one hour looking for somewhere else – I was in a complete daze, essentially I was sleep drunk. So while I *might* have been saving time by not sleeping so much, I was spending that time back by wasting it.

If we consider the crux of an event it is how fast you can get from the start to finish – not how little you can sleep. So it is about how you can achieve the highest average speed. The answer is not by sleeping as little as possible. It’s a compromise. You need to sleep enough to operate at a good mental level so you can progress forward without wasting time. It is far wiser to sleep too much, ride fast while having fun, than sleep too little thinking you will go faster, make mistake and be miserable.