Yesterday was a rest day for me and I wasn’t tempted in the least to lift anything or skate up a hill. I went to bed early enough, but when I woke up, I felt like I had just finished a workout. I have a very active mind at rest, especially while sleeping. My dreams are vivid, constant and often times, hilarious. The main dream for this night was a new Crossfit-style WOD I "developed".

For time, 3 rounds of:
Sprint 100 meters
Run 400 meters
Run a marathon
Post time in Comments

Is it any wonder I woke up tired and groggy, but at least I could walk!

Now, I know why I had this dream. Valerie is reading a book by a guy who is an ultramarathoner. (In no uncertain terms, I said "don’t even think about it"). Our conversation centered around his family’s support of what I consider to be a selfish undertaking when she told me his little daughter wondered where his daddy will be while she is sleeping. Daddy reassured her that he will be back in time to have breakfast with her! Are you kidding me? Is that any better for the family than if Daddy went out all night and played poker with his homies? But I digress. I don’t want to get into a rant about obsessive running and exercise addicts!

The ultramarathoner (UM), Val says has to give up a lot of sleep in order to train. (That is probably why Val doesn’t want to do ultras). When your sport or activity crosses over and adversely affects your health, it is problematic. Just take a look at many retired NFL players. They are the poster boys for what can happen to mind and body when you put your sport first and abuse your body.

When you train hard and even if you don’t,  you need regular sleep. In his book, "Lights Out", authors Wiley and Formby makes the case for getting 9.5 hours every night. If you are in the gym working out like maniac under thousands of watts of fluorescent lighting, your body doesn’t know the difference beween that activity and a life and death struggle against some wild animal. The stress response either way, produces cortisol. The cortisol makes sure your muscles have the glucose to do battle. That is a good thing, but when it is chronically high like it is in our society, it wreaks havoc on our health. You  become insulin-resistant and open to all the maladies associated with that, not the least of which is fat gain, heart problems, and diabetes.

When you are not getting enough sleep, there are at least 10 neurotransmitters that are adversely affected and cause shift changes in appetite and obesity, fertility, depression, fatigue, cancer, mental and cardiac heath for starters. This happens to "normal" people who do not train like you and I. These bad results can happen to us faster-unless you place your rest cycle as important as you work cycle.

At a more immediate level, if you are not getting the sleep you require after a hard workout, your recovery suffers. You can’t build the strength, stamina, endurance, physique, and speed you worked so hard to acquire on the road or in the gym. All the protein powders and supplements in the world can’t replace sleep for the rejuvenative powers it has on the mind and body. So Get Some, then get some more as Crossfitters are fond of saying.

Remember, sleeping is FUN! Live to "fight" another day. Before I return to the Land of Nod, my workout appears below.

I began by doing the Burgener Warm-up three times. I then went to hang snatches, 10 sets of 3 each.
65/65/75/75/75/80/80/85/70/65/.

These are hard to do, let alone master. No wonder the Oly lifts take years to learn.

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