My late night blog post yesterday, discussed one of my athletes who was doing Ironman California.  In that post, I mentioned that he was still on the run course, and I needed to go to bed.  I also mentioned that I might set an alarm for the early hours of the morning, to try and see him cross the finish line. Well, I chose to miss some sleep, and do just that.

You can see from the above chart, that I was awake from about 3:15 am to 4:00 am.  That was when I got out of bed and came downstairs to watch my athlete finish.  When I woke to the sound of my alarm, I instantly grabbed my phone, to check the Ironman tracker app.  Was my athlete still doing well?  Would he be finishing soon?

It turns out, that he had run a very well paced marathon, and was due to finish at almost the exact time he had been predicted to finish, when I fell asleep.  I was so pleased for him, and very glad that I chose to miss some sleep to watch him cross the line.

It is always special watching athletes cross the Ironman finish line, late at night.  This finish line was also special, because the ‘Voice of Ironman”, Mike Reilly was calling in the athletes.  Sure enough, about ten minutes after I started watching the live stream, my athlete appeared.  I could tell he was tired, but I just loved the smile on his face as he crossed the line.

Getting good quality sleep is very important for athletes.  It is critical for good recovery after workouts.  Last night however, I was happy to not have a full night’s sleep.  Sometimes there are very good reasons to do so.