Sleep easy, ride long
“[ Poor sleep] leads to reduced reaction times, lowers your immune system and is detrimental to cognitive ability”
Team Sky and their bespoke mattresses highlighted that even the most natural of activities – sleep – has fallen beneath the marginal gain microscope. Hence, we now have the Somno-Art, a device that straps to your forearm to measure the quality and quantity of your shut-eye.
As the Somno team told us, the technology in their device records your heart rate and body movement to dig deep into the efficiency of your R&R. “That’s all very well”, you might say, “but I have a fitness band that features a sleep monitor.” You might, but it’s probably an unsatisfactory one as studies such as those from neuroscientist Janna Mantua question the accuracy of mass monitors like Fitbit due to their inaccurate heartrate measurements and poorly calculated algorithms. Somno says its devices produce results that are comparable with those gathered by the gold standard of polysomnography (PSG).
Why is all this important? The average Brit gets just six-and-a-half hours sleep a night with over a third enjoying just five to six hours. As sleep is the primary mental and physical recovery period, it’s of particular concern for performance-seeking cyclists.
“Insufficient sleep, especially over a period of time, results in decreased speed and power output,” revealed Shona Halson, senior recovery physiologist at the Australian Institute of Sport and an expert in sleep monitoring. “It also leads to reduced reaction times, lowers your immune system and is detrimental to cognitive ability, which is important when it comes to factors like pacing.”
If Somno picks up a sleep issue, you can begin to address it by eliminating the usual sleep inhibitors, which include using smartphones, tablets and laptops in bed, ingesting caffeine after 2pm. It’s also helpful to seek an optimum bedroom temperature of 18°C. If doing all that doesn’t help, seek out a sleep expert.
Finally, we also spoke at length to UAE Team doctor Adriano Rotunno. An enlightening conversation revealed: you should use the app Jetlag Rooster to reduce the effects of jetlag on performance. And furthermore since illness tends to disturb sleep patterns, good hygiene practice is essential. As such, it’s well worth slipping a tube of hand gel into your pocket to prevent infections and close the toilet lid on flushing to prevent spreading bacteria due to ‘the aerosol effect’.