Wow, am I tired! I have to start going to bed much earlier. Seriously, training for an Ironman is no joke. It has me waking up every morning by 4:45 a.m. or shortly thereafter to get to the gym and get in my workouts. I admit, I do like getting the workouts done, but I also like my sleep. I have been teaching a winter sessions class every day over the break. It meets four hours every day for two weeks, with an hour break for lunch. That is a huge chunk out of my day and leaves me pretty fatigued by mid-afternoon when it is all said and done. Then, I take a break—if you can call it that—for an hour to recharge my batteries, catch up on emails, and grade papers. After that, I write music for three hours. Every day. I get home after 7:00 p.m., help get the kiddies in bed and then have an hour and a half to unwind before I have to get ready for bed. Crazy.
In an attempt to fit more things in my day, I have come up with three possible solutions: 1) Quit training for Ironman altogether 2) Slow down the Earth's rotation by by placing planetary sized magnets at either end of the poles 3) Deal with the fact that my new part-time job—Ironman—is going to demand a lot of time, and that I am somehow going to have to manage it while not forgetting my first responsibility—my family. Oh, and no one—least of which my wife—wants to hear any whining about training!
So far, so good, but I need to get some serious Zzzzz's at some point, because it will start to adversely affect my training if I don't. On average, I am getting about five and a half to six hours of sleep, and that is just not going to get it done. I do not know how much sleep human beings are "suppose" to get, but I do know that it makes swimming at 6:00 a.m. a bit more difficult on six hours, coupled with the fact that the pool feels like it is about 150 degrees in the morning. Maybe I could start napping during my lunch hour? If I did that, I am afraid I would never get up. You say Einstein, one of the greatest minds of the twentieth, century only operated on four hours of sleep? Smart dude, to be sure, but as far as being an endurance athlete, I am confident I have him beat.
