I will be honest — I ignored sleep for years. I thought getting up at 5am to train was disciplined. Turns out I was just undermining every interval session I did by running on six hours and caffeine. This episode is what I wish someone had told me a decade ago.
Sleep is not passive. It is when your body does the actual work of getting fitter. The training stimulus happens on the bike. The adaptation — the part where you get stronger — happens while you are asleep.
Key Takeaways
The target is 7-9 hours per night. Not occasionally. Consistently. During heavy training blocks, push toward the upper end. One study on basketball players showed that extending sleep to 10 hours improved sprint times and shooting accuracy — and endurance athletes see similar patterns in time trial performance and power output.
Sleep hygiene sounds boring but the basics work. Cool your room to 16-18 degrees. Kill the screens an hour before bed. Go to sleep and wake up at roughly the same time every day, including weekends. These are free interventions that compound over weeks.
Naps can be useful if you keep them to 20-30 minutes before 2pm. Any longer and you risk waking up groggy and messing with your evening sleep. If you need 90-minute naps just to function, that is your body telling you your night sleep is broken.
The real cost of poor sleep is invisible. Growth hormone release drops. Cortisol stays elevated. Glycogen replenishment slows. Your nervous system cannot consolidate the motor patterns you drilled in training. You are doing the work but blocking the payoff. Fix your sleep before you buy another set of aero wheels.
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