Training with limited time/sleep

[Michelle Lowry]

For those who do not know, I am a CPA coping with the start of tax season and the prospect of things getting worse before they get better.

BTW, cutting out some work time is something I am trying to do this month, otherwise I wouldn't be able to run 6 days a week in February.  I am still responsible for my kids' homework, piano, general welfare, shuttling to and from preschool, shopping, laundry, cleaning, etc so I really don't have more time.

I want to minimize damage to my training, and maximize the utility of the limited time I have to train.

Here are my restraints:

February:  I plan to continue to run daily, but to run on treadmill 3 days a week, which saves me 30-40 minutes a day in driving time (plus I run faster on the treadmill because of no ice and treadmill boredom - I always do a 1.5% grade).  I will give myself an average of 1:20 of running time M-F, 1:40 on Saturday.  I hope to ave 5.5-6 hrs of sleep S-Th, 7 Friday night, 9 Sat night, but it may creep to 5 hrs or below.

March thru April 15th:  Toward the end of February/beginning of March I will need to cut out Friday, then Wed, then Monday as the weeks get progressively worse.  I figure running three times a week at least 10 miles (T,TH, S) will be better than 5 mile runs 5 days a week, then I save time because of less changing of clothes, tying shoes, etc.  I will likely get 5-5:30 hrs of sleep during weekdays, 7 Friday, 8 Sat night. 

Q's -
 
At what point is it not worth getting in a run?  (4 hours of sleep plus a 10 mile run vs. 5.5 hrs of sleep and no run).

What quality (and what quantity of quality) would be most beneficial, would help me lose the least during this time.

Do you have any advice on tweaking/changing this schedule?

Sasha's advice below from my blog today:  (Sound advice, but I don't like nuts that much and I don't like avocados - Does chocolate help? ).



With this little sleep I would recommend to keep the distance as long as possible, while the speed as slow as you can handle it, or as slow as it takes to get the run done before it is time to move on to the rest of the day. That is assuming you have at least 40 minutes to run. If you have less than that, warm-up and then run as hard as you can until the time is up. Do not worry about how fast it is going to be, the times are going to be terrible compared to the effort you put into those runs. 6:30 will probably feel like 6:00. But that is OK, you are not training you are surviving.
While in survival mode, you can beat the system some by eating proper diet. It is actually possible to eat decent without ever preparing a cooked meal or eating out. The right combination of nuts, fruits, vegetables and other foods that are easy to carry and can be eaten with  no preparation surprisingly has the ability to satisfy your hunger and provide the necessary nutrients for your activities. I went to the St. Jude marathon essentially with a 72 hour emergency kit. During the trip I lived off what I brought with me + the post-race refreshments + juices on the airplane completely. Fast Sunday was the next day, I was a bit hesitant, but my body told me it was ready. So I was able to fast without any problems starting on the airplane Saturday night and going until Sunday evening as usual. The "72 hour kit" consisted of whole wheat bread, honey, bananas, apples, soy milk, rolled oats, dried dates, peanuts, avocados, dry-mix Powerade, and garlic.

[Jon Allen]

I had a question similar to this a number of months ago on the blog (Impossible to do 100 mile weeks?), and I struggle with it (though not as bad as you do).  In particular, in the summer I am often faced with choosing to do a 4 am morning run so I can get my mileage or sleeping an extra hour. 

Here is my opinion-
I would recommend making your T, TH, S runs as long and hard as you have time for, and view the other days as rest/recovery.  For example, maybe do a short warm up on Tuesday followed by a tempo-type run at the max pace you can hold for however long you have (i.e. 60-90 minutes, or whatever).  Thursday, either do hills (or hill simulation on your treadmill) or some speedwork (5 x 1200 m), with medium pace the rest of the time.  Saturday, try to do your normal long run at a decent clip.  That is what I would do if I only had 3 days.  I agree that 3 10-mile runs is better than 6 5-mile runs.  If you can squeek it in, though, 3 10-mile runs plus 1 or 2 3-4 mile runs is even better.  But maybe not possible.

In terms of running versus sleep, I think it really depends on how you feel.  I know I could sometimes get by on 4-5 hours for 1-2 nights, then needed 5-6 hours for a night or 2 to recover.  When I was in that situation, I would sometimes do less sleep and more runs every other day, with more sleep and less/no run the other days.  But just listen to your body- if the alarm goes off and you know you are way too tired and that your body needs the sleep far more than it needs the run, then sleep.  Sometimes the extra hour of sleep can make a huge difference.

So I guess my bottom line is do the best/hardest workouts you can on the days you can run.  In terms of sleep vs run, just see how you feel that day.  Somedays you may choose run, some days you may choose sleep.  But either way, don't feel bad about missing runs if you just can't get them in.  Sometimes life happens to all of us, and sometimes it is just not possible to run as much as we would like.  Don't worry, just get back to it once life (and tax season) calms down again.  Also, your running shoes won't feel bad if you miss a day, but your kids may feel sad if you don't ever spend any time with them, so keep those priorities straight.

Good luck!  You'll do just fine and come back ready to out-train all of us!

[Josse]

I agree with John,  In my many years of getting hardly any sleep and training hard I just got slower and more worn down.  I was always cranky as well and not very motivated in my day to day  chores and what not.  This year I have really consintrated on getting more sleep and my running is finally getting better.  I would say sleep is better, your body needs a break anyway, little miss fasty.  You will come back stronger after tax season:)  If you choose to cut out sleep for running you will be trying to play catch up instead of just regaining the little fitness you lost. 

[Sasha Pachev]

Michelle:

Make a list of healthy easy-to-carry easy-to-prepare foods you like, and go from there. One thing is clear to me - if one's diet results in counterproductive weight gain without exercise, it is not likely to produce optimal results for achieving the best performance, longevity, being injury free, and maintaining good health otherwise even when exercising. Even if you are able to keep the weight off, exercise becomes a cover-up for something that will eventually bite you.

Jon:

I disagree that 3x10 is better than 6x5. Once you are past the 10 minute threshold for the length of the run, the stress on the body as well as the demand for the quality of the recovery routine grows in faster than linear in proportion with the increased mileage, while even the potential for the benefit (assuming adequate recovery routine), not to speak of the actually achieved benefit which would often be only a fraction of the potential, grows at a rate that is slower than linear (the law of diminishing returns). Also, the speed of recovery behaves similar to exp(-t) where t is the time from finishing the workout - in other words, most of your recovery happens in the first couple of hours after the workout, then you get diminishing returns, and then it is even worse than exp(-t). If you wait long enough, you go into recession - negative recovery, or in other words you are getting untrained.

There should be a proper balance between sleep and mileage. Optimal  mileage for the day is determined by how much you slept the night before and how much you are going to sleep the next couple of nights. Diet plays an important part in the equation as well - proper diet allows you to productively handle more mileage with less sleep. Quality of the sleep makes a difference as well. The earlier you can get to bed the better. Different people have different requirements for sleep to run the same mileage, but here are my rules, roughly:

Consistent amount of sleep in a 24 hour period (h)           Daily mileage

4                                                                                                 5
5                                                                                                 7
6                                                                                                 10
7                                                                                                 15
8                                                                                                 20

When training on less sleep, one should not try to run fast unless time constraints make it impossible to run the ideal mileage for that amount of sleep. The nervous system is already worn down, no need to wear it out even more. The exception comes when the run has to be very short. Then the balance equation changes, we have very little time and can afford higher stress on the nervous system because it is not going to last long.

[Josse]

I also agree with the diet thingy, you can always come to my house for lunch and have beans:)

[Adam R Wende]

It is funny that you bring this up. I was thinking the same thing today during my run and reflecting on Jon’s previous thread about this. For my career choice 60hr weeks is the standard with it not uncommon to have people work 80+ hour weeks so I’m stuck to where to find additional sleep time not taking away from family. To make things more complicated in my head last night I actually got 8hrs sleep and I felt like a different person. It is a tough question as to when does the sleep deprivation overcome the benefit of the mileage. I don’t have an answer and will defer to the answers you have already received. However, I do want to make a point that the question as to duration and frequency is still an open debate. From the cardiovascular standpoint frequent shorter more intense bouts of exercise are probably better. However, work completed back in 1975 by one of my former thesis committee members clearly showed that in rodents undergoing swim training 5-days a week for 10, 30, 60, or 90 minutes per bout, only those that were swum 30 minutes at a time had changes in mitochondrial content and that this change was boosted nearly 30% when the duration increased to 60 minutes. So the inference would be that for muscle metabolism Jon is right and the longer interspersed bouts of exercise would be better. However, it has been over 30-yrs since this initial study and unfortunately the jury is still out… So for now I have adopted a sleep schedule similar to your Feb plan and try and do most of my runs from work. I wear my running clothes to work most days set something up that has to incubate for 1-2hrs and head out the door. Fortunately there is a shower in the basement of my building. To add a few extra miles some days I’ll put in some more miles after my daughter goes down for the night (either on the treadmill or a quick loop to the park from home). I wish you luck and add my voice to yours and if anyone finds the “magic” solution to this please let me know.