In the wake of marathon season (the New York City Marathon is less than a month away), I was invited to write a guest blog post about my sleep and training routines for the Grizzly Marathon in Montana. This was my first one, and I loved the training, the race itself, and the way it made me feel, but I also learned something surprising about my sleep.

So You Want to Run a Marathon?

My marathon training program consisted of running anywhere from 20 to 40+ miles per week, sleeping about 8 hours per night (on average), and eating much more protein than normal.

I did all of my long runs on the weekends with a medium length run mid-week and shorter runs (5 miles or less) twice a week. Friday distances were supposed to ramp up with the training, but I found sometimes I only had energy for a shorter run, or I wanted to preserve energy for my long Saturday run. In the end, I rested Sundays and Thursdays yet still found a running schedule to reach the right weekly mileage.

An Experiment

In an effort to understand how my sleep changed over the two months of serious training, I tracked my nights with my Zeo. I wanted to know what impact my training had on my sleep.

The results are in!

Before starting, I assumed that the more I trained, the more I would need sleep. To be specific, the more my body would need Deep Sleep in order to help build and repair muscles and rejuvenate the body. I was also concerned that soreness after long runs might hamper my ability to fall asleep and stay asleep.

The Results

It turns out that my sleep was not so simple. My sleep was always better when I had exercised: I slept more, I got more restorative sleep and a higher ZQ on days I ran.

However, when I ran 10+ miles, my sleep was almost the same as the nights when I didn’t exercise at all. Running less than 5 miles led to my best sleep. 5-10 miles had decreasing benefits for my sleep.

Check out my sleep info below.

To help with labeling,

• “This factor was not present…” = no run
• “This factor was present and a slight effect…” = Easy run (5 miles or less)
• “This factor affected me to a moderate degree…” = Moderate run (5 – 10 miles)
• “This factor was highly disruptive…” = Strenuous run (10+ miles)

It’s important to point out that the amount of my Deep Sleep increased if I did some exercise, but by the time I got to running my longer workouts, I actually got less Deep Sleep. That result was surprising as deep sleep is the very kind of sleep that is supposed to be restorative.

My conclusion is that as the trauma to my muscles increased, it was harder for my body to relax and stay in a deep stage of sleep.

Data is great, but listening to your body is equally as important

Marathon running takes months of training. I had to balance when to push and when to get more rest. Listening to my body is something I’ve learned over years of athletic training, and I found it was well worth it during marathon training to pay close attention to how much I’d recovered from the last run before deciding on my next run.

For me, back-to-back intense workout days made it much harder to recover. If I was still really dragging the next day, I sometimes opted for no workout or a shorter workout and more sleep.

Next Steps

I’m about to start training for my next marathon, the January Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Marathon in Phoenix (hopefully keeping off the Christmas cookie pounds). Based on what I’ve learned about my sleep, here is what I’m going to do differently to help me train:

• More cross training, specifically swimming and biking (it’s all about the cardio)
• More yoga, for the breathing, flexibility, and core
• More rock climbing (for strength, and fun)
• Absolutely no alarm clock mornings after long runs (to give my body extra R&R)
• Coconut water after runs, it’s full of potassium!

Anyone else have any good suggestions out there for marathon training and sleep? I’ll let you know after the race how it goes!

Julie Penner lives in Boulder, Colorado where she skis, rock climbs, hikes, and trains for marathons. She keeps a ZQ of 81 when training for marathons, and a 75 when not. She keeps a blog, Victory in Increments to share her thoughts and experiences on a wide range of subjects.

Last night I couldn't sleep.

I lay awake, trying to relax my muscles, feeling my heart beat echo through my body.

It feels like a car that won't start, and it happens quite often. Maybe that's not surprising, since I'm homeschooling two kids and running two startups at the same time. Still, sleep deprivation is not fun.

I'm always looking for new ideas to help me get a better night's sleep. I drink chamomile tea and avoid caffeine. I try to get lots of fresh air and daily walks. I read fiction before bed. I study the science of sleep. I've even tried Seth Roberts' theory that standing on one leg to exhaustion can help you sleep better (I think it works).

But sometimes I still can't sleep. And I know I'm not alone.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 40 million Americans suffer from insomnia. It's also the 5th largest condition community at CureTogether, where over 1100 people are sharing their experiences with different treatments.

Below is an infographic we put together showing the most popular and effective insomnia treatments as reported by CureTogether members; an interactive version of this, with up-to-the-minute data, is here.

The most popular and most effective treatments are shown in the top right part of the graph.

Treatments in the top left part are reported as more effective than average, but not many people have tried them, so presumably if more people tried these, they could be helped.

Treatments in the bottom right part are very popular, but reported as less effective than average, so they may not be as helpful as you might think. And treatments in the bottom left are neither effective nor popular.

The numbers are constantly changing as more people add their ratings, but the point of charts like this is to give us new ideas.

For example, I'm not personally a fan of taking drugs, but I hadn't considered white noise as an effective way to block out the basketball court outside my window or the neighbor's TV. And if quitting caffeine is more effective than taking Tylenol PM, then eliminating these two drugs in favor of a restful sleep may be a lifestyle change worth considering.

So whether you settle down with your favorite book, curl up with your Zeo, or snuggle with a loved one, sharing ideas can help us all sleep better. I hope I can quiet myself enough to sleep well tonight, and I hope you can too.

Alexandra Carmichael is co-founder of CureTogether, Director of The Quantified Self, a Research Affiliate at Institute for the Future, and advisor to a number of startups. She tweets on topics of health and chronic conditions @accarmichael. Alexandra lives with a chronic condition herself, and tries to make the world a better place by helping 10 people every day.