I guess for those who go for a ride or do a a good workout at night (after work) falling asleep is quite a challenge.
So far I have just come to accept it but last night after a 2 hours ride, finishing at around 8:30 ->9pm I did struggle to fall asleep. I have tried improving hydration, cold showers, off screen time but nothing seems to actually help and last thing I considered was going for some Zzzquil but I am concerned of undesirable effects (also; is this considered doping?).
Anyways, curious to know some of the techniques used around here to help with sleep after a late ride.
@Reynaldo_Lopez Try to get your hydration earlier in the day as you may just wake yourself up if you hydrate too much before bedtime. Also I just use four part breath to push out all of the distractions and it seems to work.
Since retiring (from work, not my pro cycling contract) a couple years ago the vast majority of my riding now is late morning and midday. Now, like you @Reynaldo_Lopez when I ride in the evening (anytime after 5 pm) I have a SUFfing hard time getting myself to sleep and end up staying up much later than usual. This is often accompanied by eating EVERYTHING in the house
I tried breathing exercises, post workout yoga, warm milk, bananas, black out blinds even an espresso(caffeine helps me sleep when I’m tired). Nothing worked.
If I can’t start a high intensity workout, that I know will leave me wired, before 7pm I either plan to do it before work instead or skip it. I know that for me that the reduced quantity and quality of sleep following a late evening workout hinders my recovery process so its just not worth it in the long term.
If I know my only option is going to be working out late I’ll swap a short high intensity session for a couple of hours of easy Z2 , I find it easier to get to sleep after an easy session.
I never do anything cardio after 5pm else I can’t sleep at all. I’ll sometimes do gym in the early evening, but finish up by about 7pm. I seem to really need a gap between exercise and bedtime. I ocassionally will do an evening bike session during ToS but the impact on my sleep quality is so massive that I’ll do everything I can to do all workouts in the mornings.
I do most of my trainer riding in the evening, usually around 8pm. I tend to have a coffee or 250ml redbull an hour before my session. I’m usually in bed, falling asleep around 11:30pm - midnight. I sometimes struggle to settle and get to sleep if my workout is particularly long (finishing after 10pm) or I had too much coffee. I get up around 6-6:30am. I try to do my longer zone 2 riding outside in the mornings.
It seems this is a common thing, for those of us with a 9 to 5 the options are between early morning or bad sleep or as some have said, Z2 rides in the evening. The thing with Z2 is that is pretty hard to keep out on the road, at least for me. As soon as I hit a climb things get serious and I usually push as much as I can from there on, I guess I’m not the only one…
I’ll start with better hydration pre-ride for evening rides and follow the ride with a breathing exercise and see how that goes, the thing is after those rides my mind cannot stay quiet and HR usually follows.
It’s probably a much better lifestyle! My job does not really allow for such a healthy arrangement. The common pattern here is that we both seem to need at least 2h of rest after the exercise to comfortably get to sleep.
I raced last night, went back and did some work and then of course couldn’t sleep and thought of this thread. I ended up going back to my 4 part breath and eventually fell asleep.
I struggle with this on a regular basis. I’ve also noticed from the data from by Garmin watch, that my REM sleep is almost nonexistent in my sleep cycle. I’ve seen some studies that point to evening exercise blunting or delaying the release of melatonin? I’ve added some to my evening routine (>3mg) and found it improves getting to sleep and that night’s overall sleep. Open to the Wahoo folks chime in.
