January 30, 2007 by Clymber
Posted in
This is a general question about maintaining fitness...
How often do you let sleep (or lack thereof) decide your cycling workout for the day?
Back when I was lifting hard, I would ease off anytime I was up too late the night before.... but how does that translate into cycling? I need to maintain/build my riding base now, but after a few late nights, I don't feel like doing crap and generally don't. What do the "experts" say? I hate to miss riding, even if it's in the garage.
TIA,
Brad
I have the same problem. I
I have the same problem. I keep trying to get up early to ride or run, but I am so dang tired that I just can't do it. I guess it is time to tie the kids to their bed and just go to sleep.....
no expert
i'm no expert on training but everything i've read says to monitor your waking heart rate. After several weeks of this you will notice an increase in your waking hr if you don't get x amount of sleep. My number is 7 hours. If i don't get aleast 7 hours my hr is around 10 beets higher. You will also get elevated HR if you've been training to hard. I've read that is basically a sign that if you don't back off for a bit (weather it be lack of sleep to training to vigoursily) you may hurt your training progess.
Waking hr is simple. I simply wake up and count my heart rate beets for 30 seconds and mulitiply by two. You want to do this before you even get out of bed.
I can remember reading
I can remember reading articles that stated that one of the biggest issues facing the non-pro racers is proper recovery time. Which seems like it would be closely related to the right amount of sleep.
You can go out and train extremely hard, but if you don't plan for the proper recovery time (of which sleep would be the most important) as stated above, you'll eventually run into decreased levels of performance.
Age may also play a factor, since I'm closing in on 50, I'm tired/sleepy all the time!!! But like many today, I'm hunched over a computer 90% of the day, and it's difficult to maintain a decent fitness level, especially during these very cold temperatures.