story of two sleeps
in a comment to yesterday's post about Peter Pan, a friend asked how I juggled staying out until 3 am and having to work the next day. My smart-alec response was that: if there is one fantastic overlap in the Venn diagram of clubbing and randonneuring, it's that both prepare you for being highly efficient with the sleep that you get. More specifically, you learn how your body sleeps, and, if you're lucky you train yourself to work with your sleep cycle.
Most of us go through multiple cycles of REM sleep at night, with each cycle being about 90 minutes long. You sink into slumber, get into a deep state of rest with dreams that allows your brain to reorganize and reset itself, then emerge into a state of light wakefulness before dropping back into it again. The trick is timing your waking moment with getting out of REM sleep. Waking up before or after REM state is fine. Waking up while you're in the middle of REM sleep can be unfortunate.
On Wednesday, I dawdled home after a club night that involved bellydancers, circus people and welcome distractions. The night was fresh and crisp and I high-fived a young woman hailing a cab in Kenmore Square. I was in bed by 3:30, then woke at 8 without an alarm. Four and a half hours of sleep. Three complete REM cycles. I've had to ride 150 miles on just one. A full workday with four hours of meetings was nothing.
I went to bed a bit past midnight last night, after packing and prepping my bike for a Memorial Day Weekend tour through Vermont. I got a call at 5 in the morning, as I was in deep REM, and it was our head of Hosting Operations, needing backup for an upgrade gone south. I groggily put some clothes on, took out my laptop and talked his guys through recovery procedures for the better part of an hour, then crashed and slept for another couple of hours. I easily got a lot more sleep than I did on Wednesday, but that deep interruption still feels like a kick in the head.
Most of us go through multiple cycles of REM sleep at night, with each cycle being about 90 minutes long. You sink into slumber, get into a deep state of rest with dreams that allows your brain to reorganize and reset itself, then emerge into a state of light wakefulness before dropping back into it again. The trick is timing your waking moment with getting out of REM sleep. Waking up before or after REM state is fine. Waking up while you're in the middle of REM sleep can be unfortunate.
On Wednesday, I dawdled home after a club night that involved bellydancers, circus people and welcome distractions. The night was fresh and crisp and I high-fived a young woman hailing a cab in Kenmore Square. I was in bed by 3:30, then woke at 8 without an alarm. Four and a half hours of sleep. Three complete REM cycles. I've had to ride 150 miles on just one. A full workday with four hours of meetings was nothing.
I went to bed a bit past midnight last night, after packing and prepping my bike for a Memorial Day Weekend tour through Vermont. I got a call at 5 in the morning, as I was in deep REM, and it was our head of Hosting Operations, needing backup for an upgrade gone south. I groggily put some clothes on, took out my laptop and talked his guys through recovery procedures for the better part of an hour, then crashed and slept for another couple of hours. I easily got a lot more sleep than I did on Wednesday, but that deep interruption still feels like a kick in the head.