Hacker News Reader

Comment by japhyr | Hacker News Reader

I like to run long distances, half marathons and mountain runs. When I'm in shape, I can run reasonably fast; I can get close to 7-minute miles on hilly half marathons, and place in the upper quartile in mountain runs.

I have gone through some times in life where it's been really hard to sleep properly. My kid is three years old now, and he still interrupts my sleep patterns. I'm a teacher, and I never sleep enough during the busy time at the start of each school year. When I'm not sleeping enough, I feel it in my running. My muscles are fine, my cardiovascular system is fine, but something isn't there. I can maintain my mileage, but when I try to push myself, I just come up empty.

The best approach I've ever found to help me get enough sleep, was to get rid of my alarm clock. Not using an alarm clock ensures that I get the most out of the sleep that I do get each night.

View on HN

You probably are overtaxing your central nervous system. Not getting enough sleep keeps your nervous system from fully recovering, which makes it harder to push yourself even if you have the cardiovascular and muscle capacity.

I recently stopped using an alarm clock, and it seems to work out a lot better. I now don't get waken up in the middle of a sleep cycle, and the sunlight naturally wakes me up.

Strangely I feel dizzy without alarm clock and it takes a bit too much time to get to high energy. With alarm clock there's a certain rush to jump into action.

I wish I had the same rush without an alarm clock.

I know I'm going to state something obvious, but have you tried going to bed earlier?

I've honestly met people who try to get up earlier, but don't realize the easiest way to get up early (in the longer term, of course) is to catch sleep early.

My wakeup time is flexible so I have tried the whole spectrum, going to bed earlier (10pm) or later ~12am, ~2-3am.

Waking up without alarm for all these sleeptimes feels roughly the same so I'm not sure if I'm a "lark" or "owl".

My focus is definitely the best in the evening, just hate the slow fogginess in the morning and would like to switch to "lark" mode, unsuccessfully.

Waking up with alarm makes me more sharp than without alarm but as the wakeup time is flexible it feels stupid to do so and I fallback to dizzy mornings and late-night work against ma inner will.

This.

It took me years to realize simply going to be easier was, not only the obvious answer, but also the cheapest & most sustainable. https://garrickvanburen.com/archive/how-i-learned-to-get-up-...

hah! Thank you for the link! Your experience definitely rings a bell -- I'm now a father of a 6 months old and I did my fair share of experiments with Zeo a few years ago.

By the way, there is a special firmware going around for Zeo that if installed will store the data unencrypted and also enables sending "real-time" info to the serial port located at the back of the device (I managed to read this data successfully using a python script that was also provided).

If you're interested in that custom firmware and realtime data schematics&code and not finding from the web, ping me and I'll look up from the archives!

For me wearing zeo more than 5 days in a row became unfomfortable, how long did you use it constantly to get to this 6.30am wakeup time?

You mention 18 months but I guess it's not possible to wear the headband for that many months in a row comforably?

Thanks. In my 18 months with the Zeo, I went through at least 5 headband sensors. In that time I wore it all the days I was home - which was most days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com