A few days ago we considered the tarsnake of the common cold and how to avoid it.

Sometimes getting good sleep means tiring ourselves enough to overcome the distractions of the world. Click to view.

The subject of sleep was purposely left out of that article. It is obvious that waking rest is an important component in effective training, and to avoid overtraining that can lead to illness.

How sleep computes

Sleep lets your body recover and protects your immune system by restoring every system in your body to a normalized starting point. Sleep is a little like a computer software that checks your operating system, eliminates bad files and optimizes your hard drive. You need to run that software every night to keep your hard drive, OS and programs in working order.

Lack of sleep can be torture

Anyone who has ever struggled with insomnia or sleep deprivation knows it can be torture. In fact forced sleep deprivation is literally used as a form of torture to weaken a human being and create a desperate mental state. No fun.

Keeping sleep in balance

One of the known effects of mental health challenges such as depression is a strong desire to sleep. The human mind seeks to escape emotional pain just as the body has warning signals against physical pain that make you want to quit whatever it is that you are doing to produce that pain. People suffering from depression will often sleep for long periods of time. Yet the ironic twist is that people experiencing depression can also find themselves experiencing broken sleep patterns. The mind almost turns itself inside out, upsetting the natural levels brain chemistry that helps us all get to sleep. Getting normal amounts of sleep when you are depressed can be quite a challenge from either end of the spectrum. Interestingly, sleep is chemically linked to depression through a relationship of serotonin in the body. A Medical News Today article on the subject puts it this way: “Serotonin plays an important part in the regulation of learning, mood, sleep and vasoconstriction (constriction of blood vessels). Experts say serotonin also might have a role in anxiety, migraine, vomiting and appetite.”

So you see, the need for good sleep and the steps we need to take to get there are often intimately linked.

Exercise as a tool, and a challenge

Regular exercise can be a naturally helpful tool for getting good sleep. If you tire yourself out by running and riding to fall asleep naturally, then you have achieved a good balance.

But if you are losing sleep for any reason and keep trying to exercise, your body and mind can run into trouble. You’ll get overtired, then your immune system breaks down. Sooner or later you’ll get sick with a cold or other viral or bacterial ailment.

It takes preparation

We all know getting good sleep is an important thing. Yet some people take good sleep for granted. We’ve all heard people who happily chirp, “I never have troubles going to sleep.”

Lucky for them. Because people whose sleep habits do get interrupted can face enormous difficulties in living a normal life, much less training hard to run and ride and improve performance.

Gaming the system, versus knowing yourself

Taking sleep aids is a mixed bag, of course. Dependency can become a significant issue if the drug of choice is so strong that it replaces your natural ability to fall asleep.

Which means it can pay to get to know your sleep habits, and not take them for granted.

If you’ve ever fallen asleep on the couch in the afternoon after a hard run or ride, you know that sometimes when you try to go to bed later on, your mind and body are not ready again. The signals that turn on your ability to sleep have already been fired, and your brain is alert and restless.

Sometimes a late night (healthy) snack can relax you and help you get to sleep, or reading. Sleep experts do not seem to recommend watching TV, since that is a stimulating experience, but frankly, the experts are not always right. It seems to work for some people.

Sexual tension and other mental states can also lead some people to sleeplessness. In the absence of consensual sex a session of masturbation relaxes some people enough to get to sleep. But be judicious. At times, all that a tired body needs to put it over the edge to a risky level of fatigue is one more level of stimulation.

The primary goal is taking your mind off getting to sleep so that you naturally grow tired or sleepy and can let down enough to achieve Dreamland.

Be patient with yourself 

It is important to know a few things about your own body’s need for sleep. Being patiently aware of when and how you best fall asleep is a healthy practice. There is likely a window of time in the evening when your mind is best ready to shut down, and your body too. It varies. For one person that magical hour might be 9:00 p.m., while another might not be ready to sleep until 11:00 p.m.––about the time you realize the guests on Letterman and Leno are just another pair of Hollywood stars pumping their next project. Those vapid words can convince just about anyone to doze off.

America asleep 

Getting good sleep is a major issue for millions of America,  and if you are genuinely having troubles do not take it lightly. You might want to start by researching your sleep issues at the Sleep Foundation.

Sleep for the runner or cyclist 

This is you on exercise.

To put it plain and simple, running and riding can be used like a natural prescription to getting good sleep. Our bodies and minds really do crave physical activity once we have built a foundation for fitness. The goal, of course, is to learn to sleep like a baby.

Of course, well-trained athletes can actually have problems getting to sleep if they miss a workout or are tapering their training in preparation for a race. Generally a little less sleep the night before a competition will not affect you. It is the night before the night of a race that is most important, and the few days leading up to a competition.

Being aware of that cycle and getting good rest leading up to a race is crucial in the event you become too excited to sleep much the night before a race. Nothing to worry about. There will be plenty of time to sleep after you’ve set a PR!

Protect your schedule

Getting good sleep and maintaining it throughout your training and racing cycle is really a question of establishing trust in yourself and your daily routine. It does pay to be a little protective of your schedule and realize that even small variances in routine can produce sleep shortages that lead to trouble. Of course it can be just as difficult turning down great sex, for example, in favor of getting good sleep. So you sometimes have to take a risk or two. But the athlete in training invests so much other time in workouts and diet and immune system protection that it makes little sense to compromise your rest by staying up too late when your system is on a razor sharp line for a competition.

That’s why the Old School trainers used to counsel boxers not to have sex. Sure, they thought it drained the machismo somehow, or took the edge off aggression. Whatever. The real point is that staying up late and losing sleep for any reason is the real risk to the athlete in training. Or the person working a tough job. Or the parent caring for children day after day. We all need good sleep to be our best.

In sleep we trust, and that means trusting ourselves to sleep.