You know the story. You’ve got a big week of training lined up, but you’re missing out on valuable sleep that you need to help your body recover.
It’s the story of my life right now. I’ve been working to bounce back from a knee/foot injury from the Chicago Marathon. My training has been made up of short easy workouts, slowly building to the long hard sessions I’ll need to prep for IM Florida 70.3 and IM Wisconsin.
To add to the mayhem I have a 2 year old who’s decided 4am is time to be wide awake, and a newborn who… well… is a newborn, so she hasn’t quite developed a respect for “night time” yet.
Take this morning as an example, Sam (my 2 year old) was wide awake yelling “DAAAAAAD WHERE ARE YOU!!!” At 4 am, I tried to get him to back to sleep for a while, but after an hour of up and down I called it quits and took him downstairs. My wife and I were already up and down with our newborn, so we’re drained.
It’s too early for breakfast, so we had some fruit (and coffee for me) and started to play. After a cup of coffee I had a little pep! I reluctantly put on Wonder Pets (we don’t like him to watch TV, so it’s a last resort) and I got on my bike. My legs felt like Jell-O… I just didn’t have it in me, after 5 minutes I bagged the workout.
Because I’ve been so tired I took the last 2 days off. So I REALLY wanted to get some work in today. I’m going to shoot for getting a ride and run in during nap-time. So we;ll see how that goes.
So how do you manage getting in your training and rest? Do you have any tips or suggestions?
Phil Castello 
You need sleep. It’s an important part of training, is recovery. However, so is getting used to being up super early. When the little man or lady get you up and you get them back to calm. get on the bike, go for a run, gut through it.
The Ironman is an early to late in the day event, overcoming being exhausted is a big part of it. Most athletes wake up around 2:00AM to have a massive breakfast and then go back to bed for a few hours before the race.
Thanks Buddy!