The effects of sleep on cycling performance.

Bhima

2 questions in this thread:

1) I've heard about pro riders eating a meal an hour after a race, then having 90 minute naps immediately afterwards. This will then be followed by more eating/hydration and a massage/etc... How does this nap help? After a short afternoon nap, I always feel hungry. Is it some kind of technique to motivate the riders to eat sufficient food? How does this help with recovery?

2) Assuming you're still not suffering from any fatigue from a previous ride, what effect would having NO sleep have on your riding? I've often done all-nighters, due to work, UNI, etc and have gone out for a 4 hour ride after 30 hours of being awake. At first, it feels terrible but you soon feel normal again and i've found it impossible to tell how hard i'm pushing in the first hour - it's almost as if i've lost all concept of pain, but simultaneously, it feels like a constant drag. You can be going quite fast and feel like you're going 5mph and are not pushing hard enough. :shock: Is there any health risk here?

The reason i'll ride is an attempt to stay awake long enough so I can go to bed at the "normal" time and not disrupt my sleeping patterns even more by falling asleep at 2pm. I just wonder if it's unhealthy/risky though. The strange thing is that my senses are so much more awake than usual - my reaction times decrease massively and i'm waaay more aware of danger on the road etc...

andrewjoseph

Are you really asking if there is a health risk when you ride at fast speeds with no sleep for 30+ hours and your reactions times are much slower?

just a gut feeling, but I'd say yes, both to you and other road users.

fuzzynavel

andrewjoseph wrote:

Are you really asking if there is a health risk when you ride at fast speeds with no sleep for 30+ hours and your reactions times are much slower?

just a gut feeling, but I'd say yes, both to you and other road users.

I'm sure if he eats a few more bananas then 60 hours without sleep will be attainable!

Blonde

I did a 600km ride in 32 hours without any sleep. I was OK actually, but some people on the same ride were not and started to visibly wobble/fall asleep on the bike and had to stop for a couple of hours sleep break. That just depends on the iindividual tolerance to sleep deprivation. Afterwards you will feel terrible though, even if you cope at the time quite well. I took me about four weeks to catch up with sleep and recover fully - though recovery times will vary depending on how adapted you are already. Generally the more experineced audax riders will recover quicker, simply because they are better adapated to that type of riding. The effects are cumulative though, so you can easily end up over trained if you try to do one a week, or one a fortnight on top of other riding, because you're not getting sufficient rest and recovery. If you are talking about performance in terms of riding speed, then of course your speed will decrease after sleep deprivation (and the related muscle fatigue) if you are riding all night - however the enduro 24 hour races combat that to some extent by having each rider in relay completing 40 minutes or an hour at a time, rather than each simply riding the whole distance (or to exhausion), so the average speed for the team and the individual is kept high as you're able to get some kind of recovery and rest between efforts. Audax riding isn't about speed though, and can be completed at a steady pace (in my case, it was more, a steadily decreasing pace!). On long audaxes you can find yourself just steadily rolling along with no feeling of pain or of any effort and you are more aware of traffic simlpy becase it's dark and there is little traffic at that time of night. Howver I still think your actual responses are slower. You just don't think they are. Luckily you tend not to be riding very fast either, having spent all day riding! Riding at night always feels faster, but actually you usually go slower, even if you start the ride at night (the Plains 300 km starts at 11pm) and haven't already been riding all day, due to the low visibility

shockedsoshocked

No sleep = you feel shit.

Lots of sleep = you'll feel great.

Blonde

As for why they have nap after riding - don't you ever feel all sleepy after ride? I like to have a nap after a ride (if I've got time) particularly in winter. If you feel sleepy, why fight it, you might as well put your feet up and get some quality recovery time.

vorsprung

In 2007 I did PBP, Paris-Brest-Paris 1200km event.

Day one starts at 10pm, you ride through the first night and day.
On night two I was aiming to stop to sleep at Loudeac. However, unfortunately due various problems as it came to the time of night I usually go to sleep I was nowhere near it. There was still a couple of hours riding. And I just couldn't stay awake. I couldn't pedal. I would go a few yards and then have to stop.

I tried having a short nap by the road- didn't work. Taking caffiene gels-didn't work. in the end as a last resort I put on really loud techno on my mp3 player and tried to put a big effort in. Adrenailin keeps you awake y'see. And it worked. My body decided it was on the turbo in the garage back home and switched to working at lactate threshold. After getting on for 24 hour in the saddle with no sleep I was going at a very brisk pace. I would catch groups and just blast past. I got into a race with a french chap but lost him in the end in a town.

When I finally did get to Loudeac I was so hammered that I couldn't eat real food (managed some rice pudding) but I had enough time in hand to sleep

ConsciousPilot

I've not had much sleep in the past two nights due to work, so when I got back this am my body was telling me to lie on the couch / bed and rest. My brain was telling me I should get out on the bike otherwise it would end up another wasted day and zero miles. The brain won, and the body duly obliged. HR seemed a bit higher, but that might have been the head wind on the way out. Felt great afterwards.

Following years of disrupted sleep patterns, I find that a "power nap" (30min-1hr) during the day can reenergise your body. Only downside to lack of sleep as I understand, is that it may cut a few years off your lifespan. Just dont die early because you fell asleep on the bike!!

dennisn

ShockedSoShocked wrote:

No sleep = you feel shoot.

Lots of sleep = you'll feel great.

Very well put.
I was awake for 4 days and nights once. Thought I was going insane.
Not sure who said it but "...the hardest part of being an athelete is forcing yourself to rest....". Or something along those lines.

Edwin

Does anyone else think this thread should be renamed to 'The Effect of Recreational Drugs on Cycling Performance'?

shockedsoshocked

Edwin wrote:

Does anyone else think this thread should be renamed to 'The Effect of Recreational Drugs on Cycling Performance'?

Apparently a good way to lose weight is to go on the "amphetamines and celery diet".

a_n_t

ShockedSoShocked wrote:

Apparently a good way to lose weight is to go on the "amphetamines and celery diet".

I can never get my celery to light up.

Blonde

Does caffeine count as a recreational drug? Military issue caffeine chewing gum worked for me on the longer audaxes. Boots chemist used to sell their own brand caffeine strips (rice paper that melted in your mouth) but don't seem to stock them anymore. Much better than Pro Plus - effective more or less immediately, as is the gum.
http://stayalertgum.com/

freehub

Bhima wrote:

2 questions in this thread:


You can be going quite fast and feel like you're going 5mph and are not pushing hard enough. :shock: Is there any health risk here?

.

I've had this before, I went to fix someone computer and whilst I was there I was given some brown ale in a 550ml can, I have not drunk much for a while so I'm quite abit of a lightweight as far as drinking is concerned, afterwards I felt wobbly and all that, but I would not accept one can of brown ale would cause this, don't know if it's stronger than normal beer but carlsberg does not have the same effects on me, Guinness does not too I love that stuff.

But anyway I was going along on my bike doing 25mph and it felt more like 15.

JonEdwards

I do quite a few overnighters due to work and quite regularly go straight back to the office afterwards and work on through the next day - usually ride to and from the office, but have occasionally had to do long distance drives back from site.

The fatigue comes and goes in phases. Food helps keep me focused, as does having something active to concentrate on, so riding a bike, or driving on minor roads isn't too much of an issue. Motorways and sitting in front of the PC are deadly though....

When I'm in an "on" phase, fatigue is something I'm very rarely aware of, and the OPs comments are very true. You can be bowling along very quickly and be hardly aware of any effort at all. But I HAVE to keep eating! Caffeiene is something I try to stay away from - sure it wakes you up, but when it wears off you can have fallen asleep without noticing. NOT soemthing to be done if there's any possibility of you driving.

I do end up operating on a very short fuse though. Woe betide anybody who gets in my way...

Hitting the sack afterwards is a huge relief though. 12 hours of SOLID sleep. The next morning I usually feel like sh!te though.

Longest I've been up is 62 hours. Day in the office, prep a gig overnight, drive across the country, put the gig in, duty it over the next night, pull it out the next day, drive back across the country, drive back home, have a bath. SLEEP. No caffeine either! That was 10 years back. Don't think I could do it (or want to!) now.

synchronicity

The longest continuous stretch I have ever stayed awake for was 44 straight hours. That's like doing two all-nighters back to back!!! :shock:

I realise that the word 'straight' is reduntant, but I didn't even have a 5 min powernap. That was back when I was [leading up to] handing in my final Uni Project.

I can assure you I did not cycle nor had no intention to. I felt like a freakin' zombie on my feet and nearly got run over as a dazed pedestrian. :oops:

Mammals NEED sleep. If you're deprived, of course your performance will suffer. It's basic common sense.

Thought experiment: Just try staying awake for as long as you can... you'll find out after a day or two that it's not something we can control.