As a perimenopausal woman in her 50’s, I have many of the “symptoms” that come with being in that stage of life. Waking up in the middle of the night is one of them, and it can be really annoying to stare at the clock for hours on end.

I often think about how that affects my running, especially if I have a longer run scheduled. My morning coffee helps immensely, but how much can not sleeping cause poor performance on the road?

So I’ve done some research on sleep and how it benefits us as runners, or how it is detrimental if we don’t get the sleep we need to perform well.

Runners NEED to sleep for Recovery

Not surprisingly, runners need more sleep than someone who is sedentary. The extra effort we exert during the day means in order to feel energized and not fatigued all the time we need to rest our bodies more at night.

Now that I am older, my bedtime has shifted from 11 to 10PM and I am almost always up by 6AM (mostly thanks to my getting up for work husband!)

Theoretically, that should be a pretty good sleep. But, with the middle of the night insomnia sessions it means some nights I’m barely getting 5 hours.

We know that recovery is important to rebuild muscle. The optimal time our bodies find to do that is during Non-REM sleep…deep sleep.

Because our brains are using less energy during this Non-REM sleep, the blood supply is able to “feed” muscles with oxygen and nutrients to help them heal and grow.

With insomnia, we are interrupting our sleep patterns and hindering that much needed recovery time.

So what can we do to help us get to sleep?

If available on your device, switch your phone and tablet to night time mode an hour before bed (which brings down the “blue light” which is said to interfere with the bodies ability to recognize it is time to rest).

Get totally off the electronics 30 minutes out and have a cup of “sleep” tea, or other herbal tea to help you relax. Sometimes I will read a physical book or magazine while having my tea.

Obviously caffeine is a huge culprit for sleeplessness, but I was surprised to learn it can impact your body for up to 6 hours! Subtract 6 hours from your bed time, and commit to not drinking (or eating…hello chocolate!) caffeine during that time.

Alcohol can help put you to sleep, but it can also wake you up later in the night. I usually don’t drink anything with calories Monday to Thursday as a general rule, so no alcohol on those nights.

Weekends are when a lot of us have a drink or two, but usually that is at night. Try to limit the amount you are drinking for a good nights sleep.

We live on a lake, so love to wake up and see it in the mornings from our bedroom window. I lower the shades at night now, to keep any light at a minimum. Which I know is a no-brainer…but we used to sleep with the shades open. Darkness tells the body it is time to rest.

Sleep masks are not just used in Hollywood to make a movie star look pampered. I use one on a lot of nights if I am having trouble to block out ALL light, and it really does help.

The body produces melatonin naturally, and I usually give myself until midnight to fall asleep. If I haven’t, I take a melatonin gummy.

Even though every product claims you won’t feel groggy in the morning, I always do…so I don’t take it any later than that. I also stick with half the recommended dose. 

Word of caution on melatonin…it can lose it’s effectiveness if you take it all the time AND can have the opposite effect later in the night if you take too much. More is not better in this case. 

One thing I have started doing is bedtime Yoga. There are YouTube videos that have “workouts”…but really relaxation routines. Some you actually do in bed. One of the ones I really like is from Yoga by Candace. This is her 5-minute bedtime routine. 

There are others that do this as well, so just search bed-time yoga on YouTube and see what pops up. They range from 5-minutes on up, so if you feel like doing a longer routine they have them…I’m just not good for anything beyond 10 minutes, lol!

Being peri-menopausal also means some wicked night sweats, so I sometimes have to get a towel to put on top of the sheets in the middle of the night. The room is cold (another way your body likes to sleep, btw) so it sometimes takes me a while to convince myself to get up. When I finally do, however, it does help me get to sleep.

Run Recovery

Our mental state is affected when we don’t get enough sleep, and tiredness can definitely slow us down out on the run. Even if physically we are ok, our brains can tell us we won’t be able to get a good run in…and sometimes leads us to believe we can’t run at all.

Sleeping is very important for workout recovery, so we need to make sure we are doing all we can to get that sleep. Our muscles and bones are repairing during the sleep cycle. Not getting enough means not getting all the benefits we should be getting from our runs.

It can be frustrating as a runner to have sleep issues, especially if we run in the mornings and we are staring at the clock knowing we have to get up in a few hours for a run! Motivation can lower, and it can become a chore that we just don’t want to face.

It is also tempting to just skip the run. I know if I finally fall asleep and then the alarm goes off, I am more likely to just go back to sleep. Which I’m mad at myself for by the afternoon.

Side note- one way to motivate yourself to get out there, is to ask yourself if you will be happy you didn’t go at “X” o’clock (a time a few hours from when the run will be completed). I ask myself this a lot when I don’t want to go out or when I want to cut it short. Usually my answer is “no, I won’t be happy” and I get out there and do it!

I am really trying to take steps to get more sleep. If this is a problem for you, explore things like getting to bed earlier, cutting out electronics sooner and making sure the bedroom is a dark, cool and comforting place.

What tricks do you use to get more sleep?