Since your days in high school, you’ve been receiving admonitions to sleep eight hours every night. Of course, this sage advice came from the same people assigning you the homework that kept you up all night. Good luck catching eight hours in a catch-22. You’re older now, but the importance of adequate rest still looms, especially if you’re physically active. Dedicated runners need quality sleep more than the average person. We’ll break down why getting enough sleep is important to runners—and hopefully before a lack of sleep breaks you down.
The Human Body: Closed for Repairs
Running is a high-impact activity. Even if you run on turf and wear the best shock-absorbing shoes on the market, racking up the miles takes its toll on your body. Giving your body the quality time it needs to perform necessary muscle recovery is critical to sustain high performance and avoid serious injuries. Not getting enough sleep each night can lead to a human growth hormone production deficit. While HGH has a bad reputation as a performance-enhancing drug in sports, your body’s HGH is a necessary and natural healing factor that you can’t do without.
More Sleep, Less Stress
A little cortisol goes a long way. This stress hormone plays a part in our fight-or-flight response, essentially telling our bodies to put away distractions and focus on the issue at hand. Not enough sleep may lead to too much cortisol production, which may have adverse effects. High cortisol production associated with sleep deprivation puts your body on high alert, meaning exhaustion and unwanted weight gain.
Attain Peak Performance
Many factors can prevent you from putting up your best times as a runner. Insufficient sleep is certainly chief among them. Pushing yourself too hard all week by sacrificing your sleep will inevitably manifest itself in your performance metrics—whether that’s as a runner or even as a worker. It’s frustrating that there are only so many hours in a day for us to allocate carefully. If you’re committed to breaking personal records, don’t skimp on sleep.
How Much Sleep Is Enough?
Why is getting enough sleep important for runners? It should be clear. That leaves one question unanswered: how much sleep should that be? The average adult requires at least seven hours of sleep per night to function at their best. However, the average adult isn’t pounding the pavement for miles at a time. Eight hours—a full third of the day—should be an active person’s minimum, with nine hours during marathon training. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” sang the late great Warren Zevon, but then again, he was a bit more accomplished as a songwriter than as an athlete, wasn’t he?
