Discussion: Sleep strategy - 72-hr. AR

Looking at doing a 72-84 hour AR and wondering what more experienced people out there thought would be a good sleep strategy. I know a lot depends on weather and length of stages, but I'd love to hear what people thought in general.

Personally, it's feeling like 72 hours is a bit of an awkward length for a race...One sleep of three hours? Two sleeps of two hours? More? Less?

Sea2Sea was my first multi-day (w Sami11...<3) and we napped more than slept. as a newbie multi-day racer, this worked for me and the team. we all had great hallucinations but were able to catch naps where needed and finish strong. so maybe consider sleep more in 15-30min chunks instead of hour chunks.

http://ar.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp/user_9015/pe...

I was always a sleep princess- I become a zombie for a while, and found that a 10 minute power nap would usually bring me right back, vs staggering around for hours half asleep. The other thing about the short powernaps is that you can just lay down in your race clothes and the short catnaps are not long enough to get cold.

This is what I usually do. Like you said there are a number of factors, but if you were looking for a general plan.

Night 1: 0 hours
Night 2: 1.5-3 hours
Night 3: 0-1 hour

Thanks all for the insight. SIlky, I've been waiting for years to see the end of this race report pop up on your blog - I didn't know it was on AP!

I really do miss your reports. They were really helpful to Kate and I as we started racing, and so entertaining.

Can't wait to see what the Yogis have cooked up for us in Oregon.

SM, sorry about the sudden collapse of the blog. so happy to hear that it helped you get started. that's why i started it, bc before my first race i had no idea what i was getting into and zero info online (in 2009...!!). now there is a lot more out there but still not enough :). i re-read my race report when i posted the link above and there are so many good memories from that race. fun to re-live a bit.