This afternoon, I was able to do the swim workout, that I couldn’t get done yesterday.  The swim session did not go that well, and during my last interval, I had a massive cramp in my calf. This cramp stopped the workout for good.  I was thinking that I should have felt strong after a day off yesterday.  I am pretty sure however, that poor quality sleep over the past few nights, is finally catching up with me.

Good quality sleep is critical for an endurance athlete, especially during training periods with high volume.  It is the best tool for recovery and without it, you will eventually suffer.

I intuitively know that my sleep has been restless as a result of my gout flare up.  I was wondering however, how restless I have actually been.  My Garmin watch ‘tracks’ sleep, so I decided to take a look at what was being recorded by it.

I don’t normally look at sleep data from my watch, mainly because I don’t think it is all that accurate.  Nonetheless, I though it might be useful to compare the data from last night, to data from another Friday night, a month ago.

As you can see above, there is a clear difference between the two charts.  According to my watch, last night, I had two distinct periods of about ten minutes each, where I was ‘awake’. I vaguely remember waking up in the middle of the night last night, so the watch data might be more accurate than I think it is.

Regardless of how accurate my watch is, I do know that I have been experiencing poor quality sleep this past week.  Unfortunately, it now seems to be starting to effect the quality of my workouts.