The night before the 2023 Boston Marathon, Emma Bates Other Hearst Subscriptions performance the next day and felt confident in her training. wake up early…
“That’s always a tricky thing,” Bates tells Runner’s World. “My go-to to get myself to sleep is one to two glasses of wine the night before a race.”
Matsumura says the best thing to do is develop a solid bedtime What Happened When I Tried a Sleep Calculator.
“Now, falling asleep is one thing and staying asleep is another thing,” Bates says. She suffers from the same tick that afflicts many runners who are worried about missing their alarms: She wakes up every half an hour to check the time and make sure she hasn’t overslept. In Boston, Bates’ boyfriend, Steve Finley, was charged with making sure she wouldn’t miss her alarm, she says. She only woke up every hour and a half.
“Health - Injuries good sleep before Boston, but probably only like four hours total,” Bates says.
Of course, four hours isn’t enough on a regular basis. The National Sleep Foundation recommends seven to nine hours a night for adults, and a study in the journal Sleep Science found that getting good sleep during training improves a runner’s performance.
Good sleep is generally defined as when you fall asleep easily, don’t wake up in the middle of the night, don’t wake up prematurely, and feel refreshed in the a.m., according to the National Institutes of Health. And studies have found that drinking a large amount of alcohol International Journal of Sports Medicine.
The overall trick to making sure you sleep before a race is to start your sleep plan well before the night before, experts say. Just as you train your body to be ready to run a race, you can train your body to fall—and stay—asleep. Here’s how.
Why You Need a Long-Term Plan for Good Sleep
Trying to sleep before a race can be a perfect storm of obstacles: You may be sleeping in a new place, trying to wake up early, battling nerves about your race, and fighting the urge to take sleep aids that might affect your race performance.
The best way to battle these potential barriers to good sleep is to start your pre-race sleep plan multiple days in advance of getting to the starting line, says Andrea Matsumura, M.D., I got some pretty Runner’s World. “I tell [my patients with chronic insomnia that] the brain is just another organ, just another muscle in your body, and you have to train it just like all the other muscles you’ve trained.”
While your insomnia may not be chronic, it’s a good idea to have a plan to help yourself deal with anything that might interrupt your sleep the night before a race. The good news is that, as a runner, you already know it’s possible to train your body as long as you put in the effort. The same goes for your brain. “It takes time to train the brain, just like it takes time to train your body to do anything,” Matsumura says.
In other words, don’t consider pre-race sleep a one-night issue. Instead, learn to address falling and staying asleep as an ongoing act of self-care. Just like brushing your teeth or showering, sleep is a nightly ritual that pays off in the long run, not just in the morning.
4 Easy Steps to a Solid Pre-Race Sleep Routine
1. Create a Bedtime Routine
Matsumura says the best thing to do is develop a solid bedtime routine, which she calls “sleep hygiene.” That means a regular set of steps you do leading up to bedtime that signal to your body and mind that it’s time to sleep.
“Use it a few weeks before the actual race, so that you’ve got this routine set up,” she says. “That way, the night before the race, you already know you’re going to be nervous, and you use this relaxation technique that your body is now attuned with to be able to reduce some of that anxiety.”
Some suggestions for a solid bedtime ritual: Shut off electronics at least an hour before bed and make sure your room is dark, quiet, and cool. This can involve blackout shades, eye masks, ear plugs, or What Runners Need to Know About Sleep.
Olympic runner, Kate Grace says she has a specific guided meditation to listen to before bed—the same one she’s used for years. “It’s a bit of just an automatic response when I hear it,” Grace says. “I kind of just go into my zone.”
In fact, Matsumura suggests build relaxation exercises into your sleep training schedule, as Grace does. Apps such as Headspace and Calm feature sleep meditations, and if you listen to them regularly they will cue your body that sleep is imminent.
“They’re just mind tricks,” Matsumura adds. “The mind is so powerful, it sounds hokey, it sounds like that’ll never work, but any kind of habit can be developed and formed and change your brain’s chemistry to do what it wants.”
2. Adjust Your Sleep Schedule
If you have a specific time you want to wake up before a race that is earlier than your typical wake-up call, Matsumura says you can “bank” sleep by sleeping more for a few nights before a race. However, a more successful strategy is to slowly shift your schedule over a few weeks so that by the time the race comes around, you’re going to sleep at the ideal race-night bedtime.
Here’s an example: If you normally go to bed at 11 p.m. but want to go to bed at 9 p.m. before your race, then, starting a little over a week before the race, go to bed 15 minutes earlier every night until you get to that 9 p.m. bedtime.
“It’s similar to when you’re flying across time zones and you’re trying to go on a vacation and you want to land fresh and not have to make that time adjustment,” Matsumura says. It’s better to do that adjustment over multiple days than to try to do it all in one night.
3. Be Selective with Sleep Aids
If you have trouble shifting your sleep schedule, you can take a small amount of a melatonin supplement six weeks to a month before your race, Matsumura says. Take the supplement a few hours before bedtime, not right when you want to go to sleep.
recommends seven to nine hours a night for adults, and a study in the journal Frontiers in Physiology found that we don’t have enough research to truly assess sleep medications’ effects on athletic performance, and the available research suggests sleep aids can cause hangover affects that decrease alertness the next day.
Why Do My Ears Hurt When I Run in the Cold Why Do My Ears Hurt When I Run in the Cold found that 12 athletes who ingested 5 milligrams of melatonin before bed did not see decreased performance the next day.
Matsumura strongly recommends not using other sleep aids, though, like antihistamines or Ambien, because those can cause hangover effects that affect your running abilities and energy the next day.
4. Minimize the Drama Around Sleep
Elite runner Sara Hall, who in 2023 set a Boston Marathon master’s record with a 2:25:48 performance, says she usually has to adjust from the West Coast time zone to the East Coast for races, but doesn’t put too much pressure on herself.
“Most of my races are on the East Coast but I usually stay on West Coast time,” she says. “I find if I try to go to bed a lot earlier than usual, I’ll be up for hours in the night. Instead, I assume I will fall asleep late and have to wake up early.”
She has done this even when, in 2018, she flew from Australia to Atlanta to run the Peachtree Road Race/U.S. 10K championships just two days after setting a then personal best in the ASICS/Gold Coast Half Marathon. “The jet lag was horrible, and I felt like death when I woke up,” Hall says.
Still, she managed to pull off third place at the 10K.
Erika Kemp, who had the best 2023 Boston Marathon debut time by an American woman, says she also sticks to her normal bedtime of 10 p.m. before a race. Her other pre-race sleep strategy? She cuts afternoon caffeine completely in the days before the race, which helps with getting to sleep and calming the nerves.
“I’ve found trying to force myself to go to bed early before a race is not helpful because it just adds unnecessary stress,” she says.
Grace aims to be low energy the night before a race. “I like to just be in my hotel room or in my room, watching TV or just with my husband,” she says. “Just going with what you enjoy, not going with the peer pressure of what other people are doing. And for me, going out to a meal studies have found.”
Finally, The National Sleep Foundation about sleep will work wonders. For example, Matsumura says, you can say to yourself: “I know I tend to wake up every hour, but I’m confident I’ll be able to wake up with my alarm.”
This is exactly what Kemp does; she reminds herself of all the training she’s done leading up to the race. “There’s no more fitness to be gained in the last few days before a race,” Kemp explains, “so being confident or at least at peace with where your fitness is at helps keep some of those pre-race nerves from keeping you up.”
