Trail Mix | Trying to run when tired – the importance of sleep and how to overcome exhaustion on multi-day ultramarathons
- Long-distance running on little sleep can be a physical and mental struggle
- A lesson to be learned in listening to the body – as important as listening to the mind
I learned something new about myself last week: it takes way more mental energy to run than I thought.
It had never occurred to me that running might be a mentally rigorous activity. I go out, put one foot in front of the other, switch my brain off and run. From time to time I admire the views, count the porcupines, look out for wild boars and snakes. Running hard takes focus, of course. But a leisurely jaunt should be mentally very easy, right? Turns out, no.
All my attempts to run last week were completely foiled by what appeared to be a deliberate attempt by my brain to shut me down. My legs felt completely fine, breathing easy, heart pumping slowly. And yet, some 20 minutes into the run, I would no longer be able to go any further. What was up?
The hypothesis I eventually settled on was general fatigue from a lack of sleep. I’ve been covering the ongoing protests in Hong Kong this summer, and as things escalated last week, sleep got put on the back burner. Several nights of minimal sleep later, the debt finally caught up. While I could function doing everyday things like writing, something about running was beyond my physical and mental capabilities. I wondered if I was just being weak and lazy. But as many of us have probably learned over countless kilometres of running, listening to the body is as important as listening to the mind, so I decided to embrace the walking.
Later that week, I called up Andre Blumberg, the “grandad of Hong Kong trail running,” to ask him how he copes with mental fatigue as a trail and ultra runner. As the founder of the infamous Hong Kong Four Trails Ultra Challenge and with many an ultramarathon under his belt, he certainly knows a thing or two about running on low sleep.
“From a training perspective, sleep is very, very important,” he said. “Sleep deprivation is just stress, it’s just like heat and altitude. It’s one of those things that just adds up and makes things more difficult.”
